To make nankhatai with ghee, cream set, grainy ghee with powdered sugar, fold in a mix of maida, besan and sooji until it just gathers, shape 20 rounds, chill the tray, and bake at about 170 °C until fine cracks show across the top and the base turns pale gold. Our starting point is 225 g of mixed flour to 125 g of ghee to 100 g of sugar.
At a glance
- USDA FoodData Central lists ghee at 900 kcal per 100 g, all-purpose wheat flour at 364, chickpea flour (besan) at 387, semolina at 360 and granulated sugar at 387.
- On those figures our 20-biscuit batch is 2,341.5 kcal, about 117 kcal a biscuit, with 6.25 g of ghee and 5 g of sugar in each.
- ICMR-NIN's 2024 guidelines say to limit ghee or butter to 1 to 2 teaspoons a day, and define sugar above 25 g a day as high.
What is nankhatai, and what goes into it?
A ghee biscuit, made here with no egg and no water. Wikipedia's entry on nankhatai describes them as shortbread biscuits originating in the Indian subcontinent, and says the main ingredients are refined flour, chickpea flour and semolina, though some recipes do not use chickpea flour. It says nothing about ghee, so the technique below is ours.
What flour mix should you use for nankhatai?
Our starting point is 150 g of maida, 50 g of besan and 25 g of fine sooji, 225 g in all, for 20 biscuits. With it go 125 g of ghee, 100 g of sugar powdered with cardamom, and a pinch of salt. We add no baking powder or soda; some recipes do, and we have opened no source that tests the difference.
The recipes that rank for this query disagree. Of the two we could open, one uses a cup of maida to a quarter cup of besan and two tablespoons of sooji and bakes at 170 °C for 10 to 12 minutes; the other half a cup of maida to a quarter cup of besan and a tablespoon of sooji, at 180 °C for 15 to 20 minutes. Neither gives calories per biscuit.
Why must the ghee be set and grainy when you cream it?
Because creaming needs a fat that holds air, and a dough built on soft fat spreads. Set ghee, opaque and grainy, beats with powdered sugar into a pale, light paste. In our kitchen, melted ghee and sugar make a slurry that never lightens, and the dough it gives slumps.
The Kansas State University food-science course on LibreTexts, in its page on fats and oils in cooking, defines creaming ability as "the extent to which fat, when beaten with a paddle, will build up a structure of air pockets". We opened no study of creaming ghee itself; what the page describes is a fat beaten until it holds air, and in our kitchen liquid ghee does not.
The grain is a clue, not a requirement. Our article on why ghee is danedar explains why ghee sets grainy when it cools slowly; here the grain simply tells you the fat is firm enough to cream. A liquid jar chilled until opaque and holding a spoon mark works just as well.
Why is nankhatai dough gathered and never kneaded?
Because working it warms the ghee, and warm ghee is the enemy of a biscuit that holds its shape. Recipe writers usually blame gluten; for this dough that explanation is weaker than it sounds.
McGill University's Office for Science and Society, in That's The Way the Cookie Crumbles, describes gluten as "a three dimensional network of protein molecules that forms when dough is kneaded with water". This dough has no water. The same page says fat coats the flour particles so the gluten in each cannot span the gaps between them, and that "sugar also interferes with gluten development and tends to produce more tender and fragile products".
So a dough that is half ghee and sugar by weight, with no water, has little for kneading to toughen. What kneading does, in our experience, is warm the ghee until the dough turns greasy, and greasy dough spreads.
Why does chilling the tray limit spreading?
Because cold fat melts more slowly in the oven, so the biscuit sets before the ghee runs. We chill the shaped tray for 30 minutes; our starting point, not a tested figure.
The one study we opened is a student project from a University of British Columbia laboratory course, Biology 342, published in the course's journal The Expedition in 2021. The authors baked thirteen batches of the same cookie dough chilled for 0 to 240 minutes and measured the diameters: longer chilling gave less spread, with a P-value below 0.0001, which they explain by chilled fat melting at a slower speed, so the biscuit sets before the fat melts. It was ordinary cookie dough, not nankhatai, and a class project; take it as the direction, not a rule.
How do you make nankhatai with ghee step by step?
Cream set ghee with powdered sugar, fold in the sifted flours until the dough just gathers, shape 20 rounds, chill the tray, and bake at 170 °C until the tops crack. Every quantity here is our starting point.
- Sift 150 g of maida, 50 g of besan and 25 g of fine sooji with a pinch of salt.
- Check the ghee. Weigh 125 g of set ghee, opaque and holding a spoon mark; if liquid, chill it first.
- Cream. Beat the ghee with 100 g of powdered sugar and the cardamom until pale and light.
- Gather. Fold in the flour mix until it forms a crumbly mass, then press it into one piece. Do not knead. If it crumbles apart, add set ghee a teaspoon at a time.
- Shape. Divide into 20 pieces of about 22 g (450 ÷ 20 = 22.5). Roll each smooth, flatten slightly, and score a cross on top.
- Chill. Space the rounds on a lined tray and chill for 30 minutes. Heat the oven to 170 °C.
- Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until fine cracks show across the top and the base is pale gold.
- Cool on the tray for 10 minutes, then on a rack. Store in a closed tin once cold.
What oven temperature, and how do you know they are done?
We bake at 170 °C and go by the top, not the clock. Ovens differ, so check at 15 minutes. The biscuit is done when fine cracks have opened across the surface and the base has turned pale gold; it firms as it cools. That cracked top is kitchen observation, not a measured end point; a brown top has gone too far.
Without an oven, our practice is a heavy kadai: a layer of salt in the base, a stand on it, the lid on, ten minutes on a low flame, then the tray on the stand and the lid back on. No source we opened gives a kadai temperature or time; go by the same cracks and pale gold base.
How many calories are in one nankhatai?
About 117 kcal on our batch. The figures are USDA FoodData Central's SR Legacy records: 900 kcal per 100 g for clarified butter (ghee), 364 for all-purpose wheat flour, 387 for both chickpea flour (besan) and granulated sugar, and 360 for semolina; semolina stands in for sooji and all-purpose flour for maida.
| Ingredient | Our starting point, 20 biscuits | USDA kcal per 100 g | Calories in the batch | Per biscuit (÷ 20) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maida | 150 g | 364 | 150 × 3.64 = 546 kcal | 7.5 g; 27.3 kcal |
| Besan | 50 g | 387 | 50 × 3.87 = 193.5 kcal | 2.5 g; 9.68 kcal |
| Sooji | 25 g | 360 | 25 × 3.60 = 90 kcal | 1.25 g; 4.5 kcal |
| Ghee | 125 g | 900 | 125 × 9.00 = 1,125 kcal | 6.25 g; 56.25 kcal |
| Sugar | 100 g | 387 | 100 × 3.87 = 387 kcal | 5 g; 19.35 kcal |
| Batch | 450 g | 546 + 193.5 + 90 + 1,125 + 387 = 2,341.5 kcal | 2,341.5 ÷ 20 = 117.08, about 117 kcal |
Measuring by the spoon? Our guide to ghee spoon measures in grams covers it.
How does a nankhatai fit the ICMR-NIN guidelines?
As a biscuit with tea, in small numbers. The ICMR-NIN Dietary Guidelines for Indians (2024) say: "Limit ghee or butter to just 1 to 2 teaspoons/day or avoid, if possible." On their 5 g teaspoon, one biscuit's 6.25 g of ghee is 6.25 ÷ 5 = 1.25 teaspoons.
On saturated fat, the guidelines say its use "is considered high when more than 10g/day of visible saturated fats (for a 2000 Kcal diet/ day) is consumed in the form of ghee, butter" or through heavy use of palm or coconut oil in snacks and sweets. At USDA's 60 g of saturated fat per 100 g of ghee, one biscuit carries 6.25 × 0.6 = 3.75 g.
On sugar: "Consumption of sugar in quantities that contribute over 5% of total energy intake per day or 25 g/day (based on average intake of 2000 Kcal/day) is defined as 'high' sugar." One biscuit's 5 g is a fifth of that (5 ÷ 25 = 0.2). If a doctor or dietitian has set your fat or sugar intake, follow their advice rather than our table.
Our article on baking with ghee works the butter-to-ghee swap. Whichever ghee you bake with carries the flavour; ours is Himdhara's A2 bilona ghee.
The short version
Our nankhatai is a ghee biscuit with no egg and no water: set ghee creamed with powdered sugar, the flour mix folded in until it just gathers, 20 rounds chilled on the tray, and 15 to 18 minutes at 170 °C until the tops crack. The ghee must be set because creaming needs a fat that holds air, and the dough is gathered rather than kneaded because handling warms the ghee. On USDA figures each biscuit is about 117 kcal with 6.25 g of ghee and 5 g of sugar.
Sources
Further reading behind the figures above. Himdhara's own numbers — yields, batch results — come from our production records and the batch reports on the lab reports page.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (2019). Butter, Clarified butter (ghee). FoodData Central (SR Legacy).
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (2019). Wheat flour, white, all-purpose, unenriched. FoodData Central (SR Legacy).
- ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition (2024). Dietary Guidelines for Indians. ICMR-NIN, Hyderabad.
- Schwarcz J (2017). That's The Way the Cookie Crumbles. Office for Science and Society, McGill University.
- Karen C, Jessica L (2021). Examination of the effects of chilling time on the spreading of cookies. The Expedition, University of British Columbia.