savoury lentil cookies with sundried tomatoes and pimento stuffed olives : baking cookies for a cause and getting loads of good vibes from all over
Savoury lentil cookies with sun dried tomatoes, pimento stuffed olives, sesame, mung, rosemary, basil and goodness of unprocessed real ingredients. Something that I would like to munch on myself. Gluten free goodness. Generally speaking, we are not a cookie eating family but I do bake some healthy cookies that last us quite a long time as we don't have more than one at a time. One cookie is always enough to be a good accompaniment to our tea or coffee and we both hate overly sweet cookies whenever we have sweet ones.
So when Charis introduced a few of us bloggers to the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap I did not feel very enthusiastic initially because I was sick of baking cookies all the time. Yes, I have been baking cookies for test trials, been developing cookie and granola bar recipes for a healthy snacks brand SmartEats for some time now. So baking some more cookies felt like overwhelming work. But I went ahead with it thinking I would get to write a new cookie recipe for the blog too. I have been getting requests to post some cookies that can be enjoyed by weight watchers and this lentil cookie was on my mind for a long time. Ever since I had tried the fried and baked versions of this Thattai. My ideas build up like that, this cookie is a nice foil to home made sun dried tomatoes, home grown rosemary and basil and a few more things including a topping of sliced pimento stuffed olives.
I had saved a day for baking these lovely cookies and yet there was so much work to be done, I felt like a fool who invited some more work on herself. But then baking is a stress reliever when I do it alone, it got better and better as I test baked 2 cookies first to get the flavors right and later I started mixing the flours and baking the cookies, batch after batch. I baked 4 batches of these, gifted some, parceled some and some are still there in a jar for ourselves. I remembered Charis all day that day, it was just because of her that I had taken this up and was enjoying every bit of it. Slicing olives, pressing them on the cookies, baking them till fragrant and then cooling them all in my wicker baskets. Yes, I use wicker baskets mostly instead of wire rack when I bake larger amount of cookies.
I packed the cookies the next day. It was a tough decision to pack them in glass jars but the tins I had ordered had not been delivered on time and there was no other choice. Some DIY to pretty up the jars and all those crafty things I did, utterly enjoyed every moment.
ingredients for the lentil cookies
(makes about 5 dozen cookies and a few more)
rice flour 350 gm
black bean flour (urad daal flour) 320 gm
butter 300 gm
sesame seeds 90 gm
dehydrated onion flakes 90 gm
garlic powder 8 gm
chilly flakes 8 gm
chopped basil 25 gm
dry rosemary crushed 3 gm
haldiram mung namkeen 100 gm
sun dried cherry tomatoes 30 gm
salt 10 gm
pimento stuffed olives about 20 (or half a jar of olives)
water 1/4 cup to sprinkle while making the dough
procedure
Chop the basil finely. Chop the dry cherry tomatoes nicely in small bits so you get only a hint of tart tomatoes in one bite.
Mix the rice flour and urad daal flour, cube the cold butter and rub it into the flour mix thoroughly till the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
Mix all the other ingredients, rub everything together to mix well. sprinkle water and gather the mixture together to form a ball of firm dough. Pinch off small portions of about 20 gm and shape cookies, making a thumb impression in the center so the sliced olive can be placed there.
Press the sliced olive and arrange all cookies over a baking sheet.
Bake at 180 C for 30 minutes or till the cookies turn pinkish and olives look dehydrated.
Cool them all on wore rack or wicker baskets as I did and pack them in airtight jars once cool.
Since I had to pack a dozen cookies for each blogger I was swapping cookies with, I wanted nice tins and ordered online, they were never delivered. Now I was in a dilemma how to ship them in lightweight unbreakable containers. Could not get anything nice and then decided to go for glass jars. I knew it would involve careful packaging but that did not deter me. You see I was enjoying the process thoroughly. Even did a wee bit of DIY to make the jars pretty.
Here are the ready jars to be packaged with bubble wraps and paper etc.
Luckily I received 2 parcels the very next day I shipped mine. These were from my talented friend Deeba and another talented baker blogger Roshni.
Deeba sent her pretty as a bunny gingerbread man and chocolate pretzels and Roshni sent Lavender crisps, the crisps broke a bit during the long travel and I was more worried about my cookies reaching safely..
Himanshu is a dear friend who bakes lovely things on weekends and I have tasted his cheesecakes and crackers etc. These candied ginger cookies were so yummy even I could not resist having one whole cookie. And it was a huge cookie to make a breakfast with milk and an apple for me...and I don't like sweet breakfasts :-) That kind of yummy cookies these were.
I sent cookies to Deeba, Roshni and Riddhi. While Deeba's were delivered just the next day, Roshni also got them in 3 days but it was Riddhi's parcel that reached so late I was contemplating sending another package for her. Fervent tracking of the courier I found out that they were delivered 2 weeks later. Was such a relief.
If you wish to be notified about the swap next year, please do sign up here.
ReplyDeleteLovely pictures Sangeeta! And about receiving them late, better late than never.. We all know how these courier companies are!
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed the cookies.. I have never made or eaten gluten free cookies so this was a totally new experience and a pleasant one! Thank you for sending them my way! :)
Sangeeta,
ReplyDeleteI am so inspired by your blog ever since in tumbled on it, that i had to rush to whole foods to get different grains and start making salads. It is so fun to find someone who has love for old grains as much as i do. While the world is obssesed with quinoa and couscous , i wish many old indians grains find there place too. Thanks you once again for such great work. Also is that your writing on jar, much can be said about a person from their handwriting, that is one great handwriting :).
I am so glad you found this blog inspiring enough to eat healthy and stock up on good ingredients. Thank you so much for the sweet words about my handwriting, I write on paper so rarely now that it's always shaky hands when I write. Keyboards have taken over the hand written words :-(
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