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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Bangalore Iyengar bakery Kara biscuit - Indian Cooking Challenge

When Valli announced the Indian Cooking Challenge for this month, I was thrilled. I had already seen this recipe at Champa's and written a mental note to myself to try it out. One of the things I like most about living in Bangalore is the abundance of Iyengar bakeries and the small eats that they serve. Kara biscuits are the husband's favourite, while I am partial to the potato buns.

What you need:
Maida/all purpose flour - 2 cups
Butter(at room temperature) - 1/3 cup
Salt - 1 tsp
Sugar - 4 tsp
Green chillies - 4
Coriander - a fistful, chopped fine
Curry leaves - a fistful, chopped fine
Curd/yogurt - 7 tbsp

Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Cream the butter and sugar well. Add the curd and continue beating. Add in all the other ingredients and gently continue mixing. The original recipe only calls for 2 or at the most 3 tbsp of curd. However, this gave me a very, very crumbly mixture which could not be rolled out. So I kept adding curd, 1 tbsp at a time and trying to roll out the dough. This could be done only after adding 7 tbsp of curd.
Roll out the dough into a 1/4 inch thick circle.
Cut it into desired shape using a cookie cutter. I shaped some into diamonds and some into hearts.
Bake at 150 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes or until the biscuits start to brown at the bottom.
What I think of the biscuits:
Everyone else who has tried this for the ICC is singing praises of these biscuits. So I am sure I must have done something wrong, though I can't figure out what it is. Maybe it is all that extra curd or all that extra baking time.
While I have a really nice tasting biscuit, I could never serve it to anybody and tell them that it is supposed to be a biscuit because it just doesn't have the crispness or the texture that you associate with a biscuit. It was kind of soft when I took it out of the oven and even after cooling, baking for another five minutes and then heating in microwave mode for 2 minutes, the inside remained chewy and soft, though the outside turned brown. As far as the taste and the aroma goes, though, this one scores big. I just wish I could have got the right texture.

9 comments:

jayasree said...

Same pinch with the shape. As you mentioned in your notes, the dough should not be wet. I too added a bit more curd in the second batch and had to bake for more time to get crisp ones. Champa says it should be like crumble and not wet.

lata raja said...

I thought I needed to add more yoghurt when my dough was so stiff that i was unablr to roll...it was just not easy to handle without applying pressure. But I refrained from adding more yoghurt. Finally I had it rolled out pressing a bot harder than suggested. The last of the crumbs were just flattened by hand. My biscuits were good.

Champa said...

Jayashree,
Thanks for the honest feedback. When you add more liquid (that is yogurt), it loses the flakiness since all the butter is even more distributed. Also, you probably needed more yogurt because of the way your measured the flour. Just guessing that if you scoop, you end up with lot more flour than when you spoon and level. If this was the reason, butter proportion also went off from the original recipe making it chewy rather than crispy. This takes quite a bit of time in the oven to become crisp. And the kind of oven also has a big hand. I do wish you try it one more time and see if it works.

Srivalli said...

I m loving all the different shapes our members have come out with!..your's look so cute too..:)

KrithisKitchen said...

Lovely looking delicacies..

http://krithiskitchen.blogspot.com
Event: Healing Foods - Banana

vaishali sabnani said...

for once i see somebody being truly honest....trust me i too was shaky about the cracks i got ... mine were crisp..but feel need to get better results..thnks Champa for giving the tips ....

Priya Suresh said...

Beautiful biscuits,enjoyed this challenge very much..

Unknown said...

Came out perfectly dear :)

Jayashree said...

@Jayasree & Lata, I did try rolling out with the original recipe applying as much pressure as I could but the dough just kept falling apart.
@Champa, yes I will try it again....like you said, it could be any of those things that affected the texture.