Khetayee

After two great recipes from the Parwana cookbook (the meat kofta sauce and the bolani), I was really excited to try something sweet. I had bookmarked two different cookie recipes, one that was traditionally eaten around Nowroz (new year at the beginning of spring) and one called khetayee that was traditionally eaten for Eid. So to celebrate Eid (last year), I decided to make khetayee on our day off from school!

The recipe seemed pretty straightforward. Combine the dry ingredients (flour, milk powder, baking powder, confectioner's sugar) and then slowly add the oil while mixing everything together. Then shape the dough into balls, flatten them a little, make thumbprints where the ground pistachios would be added (side note: the pistachios in the recipe photo were bright green, but ours weren't - where do the bright green pistachios come from?), and then bake until lightly golden.

I was excited to make these for a bunch of reasons. First, I didn't really make any desserts for Afghanistan the first time around unlike all of our other geographic explorations. Second, B doesn't get much pistachio in his diet other than some ice cream, and I thought this would be a good way to increase exposure (for prevention of allergy purposes). Third, I had never made anything with milk powder before, and I was curious to see how that would affect baked goods.

Unfortunately, the cookies I made were not good. I think that's likely user error, because these cookies would not have been passed down for generations in Afghanistan if they had this texture. They were incredibly dry and hard to eat, so stick-to-your-mouth dry that I couldn't even think about giving them to little B for safety reasons. At least I was able to give him a spoonful of ground pistachios before I made the cookies.

So, what may have gone wrong? First, I used nonfat milk powder instead of whole milk, because I was able to get a big bag of that at Whole Foods. The specialty store had whole milk powder, but I wasn't sure that packet was going to have enough for the recipe in it, and I didn't want to run short. Looking online before buying, it didn't sound like there would be a dramatic difference between the two in baking, but maybe I got that wrong. Second, I had to keep adding flour during the mixing/shaping step, because it was impossible to shape the dough I made into balls. It just kept spreading and would not keep the shape until I added a fair amount more of the flour. Third, maybe I baked them too long. I added a minute or so to the time because they weren't golden on top, but I didn't think that would turn them into bricks of chalk.

Who knows what other missteps I might have made, but the cookies were not good. Edible, but not good. I'd say the best parts of the experience of making these was being able to give B some pistachios and just how soft the dough felt when mixing it. I probably won't make them again after the disappointing results, but I'm glad I tried.