I recently borrowed 400 Cookies & Biscuits from Crofton Park Community Library on the off chance that it might have one or two good recipes in it. Turns out it had loads, so I ended up buying it! I found an ex-display copy form an Amazon seller, so it only cost me £7 :)

One interesting recipe that caught my eye was for these Curry Crackers. I’ve not done crackers before, plus it’s been too long since I did a savoury treat for my work colleagues, so that’s what I’m baking today.

To make about 30 crackers the recipe is:

• 175g self-raising flour (cake flour with baking powder already added)
• pinch of salt
• 2 tsp garam masala
• 75g butter
• 1 tsp finely chopped fresh coriander (cilantro)
• 1 large egg (US extra large), beaten
• ~2 tsp water
• For topping
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • black onion seeds (or jeera seeds if you think you’ve got black onion seeds but realise it’s black sesame seeds you’ve got…)
  • garam masala

The recipe calls for mixing the garam masala, salt & flour, then rubbing in the butter, before stirring in the egg and coriander. This dough is then needed smooth before being rolled out then cut into rectangles using a fluted biscuit/cookie/pasta wheel.

However… after last week’s success with croissants I’m in the mood to laminate the dough to try and get some puff too to! I realise over-working cookie dough is a bad idea… but I figure if I laminate instead of knead it can’t be that bad… right? Plus I’m going to use book folds (4 layers per fold) instead of letter folds (3 layers per fold) to get extra layers with less rolling out.

So I’ll mix the dry ingredients together, cut the butter into 1cm cubes and mix into the dry, then add the egg and enough water to work into a dough and form into a 2cm thick rectangle and chill for 20 minutes.

It’s a bit dry… let’s hope it gets better when the butter is rolled in!

So… roll out, book fold, rotate, roll out, book fold again, then chill again.

Then one last book fold before rolling out, putting onto parchment lined baking sheets, and pasta wheeling into rectangles then back in the fridge before baking. Not the parchment rather than my normal silicone sheets, as I don’t want the pasta wheel damaging them.

The oven goes to 180C fan while they chill. Before going in the oven they get an egg wash, and sprinkled with jeera seeds seeds (I thought I had black onion seeds, but it turns out they were black sesame seeds I have. I’ll need to pop to Spice Mountain at Borough Market to get some black onion seeds next week…).

Then in the oven for 12 minutes, turning/swapping after 8 minutes, until golden brown. I’m not swapping after 6 minutes as a) I want them to get a good oven spring, and b) I suspect as they’re chilled they might need an extra minute or two. Which they did, so it ended up being 8/turn/6.

Out of the oven they go on the cooling rack, and then get dusted with garam masala using a dry pastry brush. Then leave to cool before testing, then boxing up for work before we eat them all!

They’re really nice, with a puff-pastry feel as intended :) The curry flavour is good, but there’s not much heat. If I were doing them just for ourselves I’d add some cayenne for a kick, but these are probably perfect for work. I just hope they stay crisp over night :S