minty hearts

Over the summer I was introduced to Assamese food with the help of my friends Pari, Sutapa, and Bipro. I'm proud to say that I ate the rice, dal, and fish curry with my fingers in the traditional way. And Sutapa showed me a food blog she reads regularly: Sunita's World. Sunita is an Assamese blogger who shares her family and food on her beautiful website. The first post I read was about Minty Babies, and I immediately added Sunita to my feed reader. These not very sweet snacks seemed perfect for me.


I finally made a batch this week. I used my heart shaped cookie cutters to show some love to my colleagues (and Ant's). I made a few changes to the recipe and I'd recommend serving them with creme fraiche, Greek yogurt, or jam.


What caught my eye about this recipe is that it only uses whole wheat flour and no sugar, really. They are not biscuits, actually, at all, but more like minty crackers.


The mint is blitzed with plain yogurt and cashew nuts before adding to the dough and rolling out. (The tiny green post-it has my recipe scribbles so that I don't have to refer to the laptop while baking.)

Minty Hearts
adapted from Sunita's World

1/2 c mint leaves
5 T plain yogurt
3 T cashew nuts
3 T mild oil
1/4 c water
2 c whole wheat flour
1 t salt
1 t sugar
1 t cinnamon

Put the mint leaves, yogurt, nuts, oil, and water in a food processor and pulse.
Mix the flour, salt, sugar, and cinnamon in a bowl.
Add the mint mixture and form into a dough.
Roll out to about half a centimetre thickness. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters and place on baking trays. Reroll leftover dough and continue cutting hearts until all the dough is used.
Bake at 180C/350F for about 13 minutes until lightly browned.

I made a double recipe so that Ant and I could each take a bag of hearts to our colleagues. They are great dunked in tea; yum. And I'm tempted regularly by Sunita's ideas, so have a look. Apart from delicious-looking baked goods, she also write about Assam main meals in a very accessible way.