This recipe is inspired by the culinary geniuses of Hetal Vasaveda [the mind behind Milk & Cardamom] and Manali [Cook with Manali] and their Thandai Cake Rusk and Thandai cookie recipe respectively. My recipe takes the best of these both and creates a simple cookie recipe with white chocolate to just add some more luxury. I adapted the Thandai recipes based on ingredients I was able to source, and Thandai variations I personally love – I hope you enjoy my take too
What is Thandai
Click here for my Thandai powder recipe
Thandai is an Indian chilled drink made from milk and a variety of nuts and spices. Thandai literally means ‘chilled’ in Hindi. There are a number of different ways to make Thandai, most commonly featuring some ratio of cardamom, saffron, almond, pepper, fennel, and rose. Typically in India this drink is served during the festivals of Mahashivratri (Celebrating the birthday of Lord Shiva) or Holi (Celebrating the festival of Color) in the Northern regions of India. At home, we would drink Thandai during the summer months in Australia where the dry heat would really hurt!
After seeing the recipes from Hetal and Manali, I really wanted to create something that combined my love of the Thandai flavours and cookies, and so came the idea to combine white chocolate and a home made Thandai blend – because what is better than caramelised white chocolate, butter and spices all together?
And so began my baking attempts to make the perfect, buttery cookie with all the flavour of Thandai and the beautiful flavour of caramelised white chocolate. This recipe has taken many attempts to perfect, and I must admit that I think this is one of the best ones I have ever made. These cookies remind me of a delicious buttery shortbread, rather than a chewy chocolate chip cookie – definitely something I would serve up for tea.
What makes a great cookie?
A great cookie comes together quite simply, and the tricks to making them perfect are totally foolproof and literally apply to every recipe.
1. Ingredients at room temperature
Applicable to all baking endeavors, you must be using butter and eggs at room temperature. The best way to do this quickly is to weight out the required butter and chop it into small cubes. Set these cubes out on a plate to maximise the surface area exposed to the room, and thus will cool quicker. The easiest way to get the egg to room temperature is to crack it into a small bowl and set this aside.
2. Sift your dry ingredients
Okay, a little confession. Sometimes I don’t sift my ingredients – I simply grab a whisk and break up the lumps.
Either method works! By ensuring the flour has no lumps you will have a lovely smooth dough that comes together easily without pockets of flour.
3. Salt
All lovely sweet things need a little pinch of salt to balance out the sweetness. In this cookie recipe it is quite essential to curb the intensity of the white chocolate. Either add it into the cookie dough or save a bit to top each cookie.
4. Use an ice cream scoop
This is truly a gamechanger when it comes to shaping your cookies. I picked up my scoops from Amazon and I absolutely love them. The three sizes make it really easy to make small, medium and large cookies, and I love how uniform they end up looking.
What makes these cookies AH-Mazing?
Honestly, these cookies taste like a little bit of India in every. single. bite.
I don’t think I could have come up with a more iconic flavoured cookie that I would happily serve my grandad, friends and co-workers alike. The Thandai mixture is so wonderfully desi and is so incredibly fragrant. Opening up the box of these just releases the most intense and magical aroma – you immediately know what is coming for you and it is a really lovely thought.
For this recipe you will need about 1/2 a cup of my Thandai powder mixture. Get the recipe right here
Let’s get baking!
Thandai & White Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients
- 350 g plain flour
- 200 g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 180-200 g white chocolate, chopped white chocolate chips are okay too
- ½ cup thandai powder see my recipe for thandai powder
- 180g g brown sugar roughly 1 cup
- 60 g white sugar roughly ¼ cup
- 1 egg at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1½ tsp baking soda bi-carb soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp sea salt flakes to top the cookies
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven at 160 ° Celsius and prepare the middle rack. Line a baking tray with baking paper and set aside
- Beat the butter, white sugar and brown sugar together until smooth, light and creamy in a stand mixer, or hand mixer. You can do this using a whisk by hand but it will take roughly 10 minutes of beating
- Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth
- In another bowl, sift the flour, baking soda and salt to remove lumps
- Add the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, along with the thandai powder. Mix everything until just combined
- Add the chocolate into the mixing bowl and fold everything together until the chocolate is just combined
- Scoop the cookie dough onto the baking tray keeping a inch or so between each dough ball. I use an ice cream scoop to get perfect shaped cookies
- Top the cookies with a tiny pinch of salt, and a small piece of white chocolate (optional!)
- Bake the cookies until golden brown. This will take about 10-12 minutes. Rotate them half way through baking to get a really even bake on the cookies
I hope you all enjoy this cookie recipe as much as I do! Share your cookie attempts with me @theminiaturelife on Instagram and be sure to send me a DM so that I can see them! The Miniature Life is now also on TikTok so give me a follow for some fun behind the scenes videos of all of my experiments.
