Almond Halwa, Biscuits, 

& Crunchy Indian Snack Mix

Teatime! featuring Almond Halwa, Biscuits, and a store-bought Indian snack mix. The Halwa contains coconut oil (instead of butter), semolina flour (instead of fine sooji), ground almonds, sugar, cardamom, and whole milk. Halwa recipe from Suneeta Vaswani in Easy Indian Cooking. The Biscuits are from Mom's Big Book of Baking, by Lauren Chattman. Lastly, the snack mix contains a spiced mix of crispy fried lentils and chickpea noodles. A nice way to recharge in the late afternoon.

Iyengar Bakery Style Khara Biscuits

This Indian recipe is from Easy Bites Online. They're supposed to be spicy, with fresh chili pepper, but as I have to be careful with that for now, I left it out.  I also substituted coconut oil for the butter. The recipe describes these as "savory shortbread cookies." I assumed from that, that these would be "biscuits" in the British sense (= cookies), but the dough also reminds me of U.S. "biscuits." When I make those latter biscuits, I just pat out the dough by hand. That's what I'll do the next time I make these khara biscuits. Anyway, I do like these, although I couldn't make them spicy. They are a nice snack by themselves, or as part of a light meal!

Easy Bites Online Website, Iyengar Bakery Style Khara Biscuits

Buttermilk Biscuits (with Honey)

This recipe is from Lauren Chattman's Mom's Big Book of Baking. The "buttermilk" is the liquid (whey) left over from making paneer (Indian cheese) out of milk I wanted to use up. I'd read that this liquid could be used instead of buttermilk (which I never seem to have around), so I thought I'd try it.

Biscuits with Wild-Blueberry Spread

Now for something a little sweeter! Wild-blueberry spread on biscuits, with organic whole-milk yogurt. The yogurt is fairly creamy, so when I put a little yogurt on the biscuit, it tastes like blueberries and cream. The biscuits are from a recipe in Lauren Chattman's Mom's Big Book of Baking, except that I used oil in place of butter.