Rose cookies

Rose cookies (rosette cookies) are traditional Christmas cookies prepared in Scandinavian & a few European countries and also in most of the Southeast Asian countries. In India rose cookies are prepared for Christmas and also for Diwali, and they are known as achu murukku in Tamilnadu, achappam in Kerala, gulabi puvvulu in Andhra Pradesh, and Rose De Coque in Goa. Traditionally rose cookies are dusted with icing sugar and served with tea or coffee.

Rose cookies are prepared by dipping a hot mould into the batter and also into hot oil to form thin wafer-like cookies. Generally the batter is made using plain flour, eggs and sugar, but we, Indians, use rice flour, eggs, sugar & coconut milk, and no food color is usually added into the batter. Now I have prepared the egg-free version, and also used beetroot syrup for adding rose color to these rose cookies.

The recipe for egg-free rose cookies using home-made food color is as below:

Yields: 13 cookies

Ingredients:

Rice flour (I used store-bought idiyappa maavu)	1 cup
Plain flour (maida)	1/4 cup
Powdered sugar	1/4 cup
Cardamom*	2
Salt	1/8 tsp
Sesame seeds	as desired
Coconut milk	1 cup
Beetroot syrup *	1 tbsp (or more)
Any neutral oil or coconut oil for frying

*Please refer the tips at the end of this post

Batter making:

1	Add rice flour, plain flour & salt into a mixing bowl and mix well.
2	Add some coconut milk & sugar and mix until sugar is dissolved.
3	Add beetroot syrup & remaining coconut milk to get the desired color & consistency of batter.
4	Add sesame seeds into the batter & mix well.
5	Keep the batter covered for at least 30 minutes.

How to fry rose cookies:

1	Heat a frying pan with oil in low flame until the oil reaches the temperature of 170 deg C.
2	Immerse the mould into the pan for 10-12 seconds.
3	Remove the hot mould from oil and wait for 5-7 seconds. Dip the mould into the batter right up to the brim. Take out the mould & shake a little to drip the excess batter off.
4	Now dip the mould into hot oil and hold it without touching the bottom of the pan. When the cookie begins to separate, shake the mould slightly until detached. Remove the mould from oil and fry both the sides of cookie. Take out the cookie using skewer and place it on a plate lined with tissue towels.
5	Repeat the same from step#2 until the batter is used up.
6	Store rose cookies in an airtight container upto 10 days.

Tips & Tweaks:

• Earlier I was of the opinion that it is a boring, time-consuming and also a tricky procedure to get the perfectly-shaped thin rose cookies. Now I have understood the technique for perfecting this recipe after a couple of trials. The most common difficulty faced while making rose cookies is that the sticking of batter onto the mould, and it is solely due to the heat of oil as well as the mould, and definitely not on the consistency of batter. So we need to learn to find the right temperature for both the cooking oil & the mould as it varies when we use the mould made of iron or brass. It is preferred to keep the oil hot in low flame till the end without adjusting the flame. Also we need to learn to adjust the heat of mould according to the consistency of batter, if the batter is thick it is required to increase the heat of mould a little more and vice versa. It is possible to make crispy cookies with thick batter and also with thin batter without the batter getting stuck to the mould. So we can adjust the consistency of batter according to our convenience/ preference.

• There are about a dozen of moulds of various patterns available in the market specially for making rose cookies. They are made of brass, iron or aluminum and some are coated with Teflon also. I prefer to use aluminum molds as they get heated up quickly.

• It is mandatory to season the moulds by immersing them in hot oil for few hours the day before making rose cookies every time.

• It is convenient to use shallow frying pan with flat bottom rather than using deep pan with convex bottom.

• For the recipes using powdered sugar & cardamom we usually grind them together for an enhanced sweet flavor, but if you are using icing sugar you may replace cardamom with half a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

• Since I don’t like to add synthetic food color into any of my recipes, I have prepared beet syrup and added into this recipe for the beautiful pink color. First I have cooked the roughly chopped beets in copious amounts of water, separated cooked beet chunks from the cooking water, and then prepared the concentrated beet syrup as below.

• I like to use black sesame seeds for making plain achu murukku and white sesame seeds for beetroot achu murukku.