Baked Ghughra

My husband loves ghugra, but he tries not to eat too much fried food, so I have been making these baked ghugra for the past 2 years now. We really like them. Since they are not fried, they don't taste the exact same, but they don't taste bad at all. And, since they are not fried, we can indulge a little bit.

Important Note: Since we are baking the ghugras, please follow the recipe as mentioned below. We need cold butter. The dough should be kept in the fridge until needed. Cold butter in the dough will help to make the crust a little "flaky". As the butter melts in the oven, it will create tiny air bubbles in the dough, which is what we want. If cold butter is not used, and if the dough is not cold while making the ghugras, we will get hard and brittle crust.


Ingredients:
Shell:
1-1/4 Cups All Purpose Flour,

2 Tablespoon Cold Unsalted Butter

1/4 Cups Milk + 1 Tablespoon for glazing

Stuffing:
1 Tablespoon Teaspoon Ghee,
3/4 Cups Rawa (Suji/Semolina),
1/4 Cups Milk Powder
1/4 Cups Ground Almond (You can use any nuts or mixture of nuts of your choice),
2 Tablespoon Kismis (Yellow Raisins)
1 Tablespoon Khus Khus (Poppy Seeds),
1/4 Cups Dried Shredded Coconut,
1 Cup Ground Sugar (or Powdered),
1/4 Teaspoon Cardamom Powder,
A generous pinch Saffron,

Method:
Cut the cold butter into small pieces. In a deep bowl, combine the flour and butter well. Add half the milk and knead. As more milk as needed, to make stiff dough. Apply some oil to your hands and knead the dough one last time. Cover with a plastic wrap and transfer to the fridge while we work on the stuffing.

In a bowl combine all the ingredients for the stuffing except the ghee and saffron. Crush the saffron between your finger and thumb, and add to the rest of the mixture. Heat the ghee in a pan. When heated, add the stuffing ingredients. Roast on low flame stirring frequently for 10-15 minutes, or until the mixture is aromatic and turns pink/golden brown.

Take out the dough. Divide it into 20 equal portions. Roll each portion into 3 to 4 inch diameter disc.Take 2 tablespoon of the stuffing mixture and place it in the center of the disc. Carefully fold one side of the disc onto the other and pinch the middle portion shut. Work on your way to each side to gently pinch and seal the sides, leaving a little opening on one of the sides. Now add more stuffing mixture if needed from this opening. Make sure that the stuffing doesn't touch the sides of the disc otherwise you won't get a good seal. Now seal the opened end too.

Now comes a little difficult part. To make "pleats", pinch and gently pull the corner of the seal from a side between your thumb and finger. Do not pull very hard, we just want about 1/2 centimeter of the portion pulled out. Now fold it onto itself and press the edge of the folded portion with the tip of your thumb/nail to create an indentation. Now pull the immediate adjacent portion of the dough and fold to create an indentation. Follow the same procedure and work your way to the other corner. Make sure that the whole edge is sealed. If there is any opening, the sugar will ooze out during baking, which will create a mess.

If you don't know how make the pleats, or if you don't succeed at it:), then you can use a fork and gently press it throughout the sealed edged area to make sure that all sides are sealed completely and to get nice pattern around the sealed edge.  Follow the same procedure for to make the rest of the ghughras. Transfer into a baking sheet lined with parchment paper of silicone mat. Cover the ghughras with a plastic wrap again, and transfer to the fridge for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 355 degrees.

Take out the baking sheet from the fridge. Grease the top surface of each ghugra with milk. Bake it for 15 minutes or until the underside turns golden brown. Take out of the oven. Turn over each piece. Glaze the top side with milk. Put it back into the oven and cook for another 15 minutes or until the other side starts turning golden brown. Turn off the oven and leave the ghugras in the oven for 4-5 minutes. Take them out. Let them cool completely before storing them. The outer cover should have become hard by now.Store them in airtight containers.

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