Paan Gulkand Thumbprint Cookies
These easy paan thumbprint cookies are so delicious and so fun to make for Indian festivals like Diwali. I cannot stop eating them. A perfect eggless sugar cookie base made using paan/betelnut leaves and filled with rose petal jam or Gulkand. It is a must cookie for Diwali to share with friends and families.
What are Thumbprint cookies?
Thumbprint cookies are the quick to make cookies, using really few basic ingredients. It’s soft, buttery and bakes up quickly in huge batches. You can literally fill thumbprint cookies with anything nuts, sugar cream filling, or jams are the most popular ones. So, immediately I got this idea of filling them with gulkand as I wanted to show the gulkand in the cookies I was trying to create. I love baking them around Christmas and this year when I was planning to make some cookies for Diwali so that I can share with my friends. I came up with this idea of incorporating Indian Paan flavor. You might wonder what is Paan?
Betel leaves are known as Paan leaves. Paan itself is an after-dinner thing we eat. We also call it ‘Mukhwas’
Betel leaves are stuffed with rose petal jam or what we call Gulkand, shredded dry coconut, sometimes dates, tutti frutti and betel nuts too specially for adults. As kids we were not allowed to eat paan. But once you grow up after dinner paan is a ritual that we look forward to occasionally. Betel leaves are an acquired taste, but if people like it then you can’t stop eating paan. It’s sweet in taste and bitter with addition of other ingredients.
How to make these cookies?
So, to incorporate the flavors I added paan leaves to sugar, basically made flavored sugar using a food processor. Then I creamed the butter with sugar mix and made sure it was whipped well. Followed by adding flour and trying to pulse everything until it was mixed. Once you add flour, it will be difficult to run the food processor but try slowly without breaking the motor. You can also transfer the sugar and betel leaf mix into a kitchen-aid mixer and then cream the butter and finally combine other ingredients.
Make sure the butter is creamed well. That’s very important.
How long do they last?
If stored in an air-tight container they last for about 2-3 weeks at room temperature.
You can freeze the unbaked dough and take it out for few hours and then roll them and shape them.
Tips
- If your gulkand is not too soft. Then sprinkle few drops of water and microwave/heat it for merely 20 seconds to soften up.
- You can add cardamom powder, coconut, tutti frutti in the gulkand and mix it in before adding it to the cookies. Chop it finely. I only added cardamom powder.
- The dough for cookies should be soft. It should feel like playdough.
- Make sure to use timer to remove cookies at 10 min mark and make indentation, fill and bake again.
- You can use equal amount of flour if you do not want to use or have almond meal.
- You can also add few drops of food color in the cookie batter. I didn’t add any. I wanted light green color with specks of paan leaves showing.
Paan Gulkand Thumbprint Cookies
Ingredients
cookie dough
- 1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup almond meal
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp fennel seeds
- ½ cup sugar
- 8-10 paan/betel nut leaves
- ¾ cup butter room temperature
- ½ tsp almond extract
Gulkand/Rose Petal Jam
- 1 cup rose petal jam or gulkand
- 2 tbsp candied fennel seeds & fennel seeds
- 1/8 tsp cardamom powder
- Tutti Frutti, fine shreds of betel nut/supari, finely shredded dry coconut, dried rose petals optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven at 350 F.
- Mix dry ingredients together – flour, almond meal, salt, baking powder, fennel seeds.
- In a food processor, take sugar and roughly chopped paan leaves and give it few pulses until paan leaves are completely broken down and mixed along with sugar. Sugar mixture should look green with some tiny leaves in it. Add almond extract.
- Add room temperature butter too. Give few more pulse and mix it in. Add in the dry ingredients in a batch. It will be little bit tough to mix at this point. You can remove the cookie batter in a bowl and finish mixing it all in.
- Divide cookie batter into equal portions using a tbsp as measurement for exact looking cookies.
- Fold the dough into rounds and then place that on a lined cookie sheet. With the help of another measuring spoon or your thumb press in the middle of the dough to make an indentation.
- Bake cookies for about 10 minutes and remove them, press again on the indentation, and fill it with gulkand or rose petal jam and bake another 10 more minutes or until the cookies look done. They might still be soft when you try to touch them, but they will firm up eventually as they cool down. Another way to check doneness is to check the bottom is slightly golden.
- Let them cool down completely on a wire rack and then garnish them with extra dried rose petals, tutti frutti or candied fennel seeds. Store them in an airtight container.
Notes
- Tips –
- If your gulkand is not too soft. Then sprinkle few drops of water and microwave/heat it for merely 20 seconds to soften up.
- You can add cardamom powder, coconut, tutti frutti in the gulkand and mix it in before adding it to the cookies. I only added cardamom powder.
- The dough for cookies should be soft. It should feel like playdough.
- Make sure to use timer to remove cookies and make indentation.
- You can use equal amount of flour if you do not want or have almond meal.
- You can also add few drops of food color in the cookie batter. I didn’t add any. I wanted to speck of paan leaves to show and lighter green color.