Paan Gulkand Thumbprint Cookies
These easy Paan Gulkand 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.
Servings: 30 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.