Indian Tea shop Butter Biscuits | டீ கடை பட்டர் பிஸ்கட்
Recipe for delicious south indian tea kadai/tea shop bakery style butter biscuits/cookies. Crispy Iyengar bakery Indian cookies recipe. Salt Biscuit.
I can say a few things about most of the south Indian men and women. They love bakery butter biscuits. Some might not eat a cake but will never say no to a cookie. Trust me on this. Especially if its butter biscuits. These cookies are the real deal. These are the cookies that we love to eat all the time. These cookies are the true spirit of the French Normandy Sable cookies. They are so good and elegant with crispy exterior, tender interior and a bite full of buttery goodness. One bite and its so nostalgic. During college days in Chennai, I have had these cookies with my friends almost everyday. We used to gather around the tea shop during break hours, have a tea and share the cookies and chat for hours. Tea shops were the places where best of the ideas were born.
Lets crank up the mixer and make some greatest butter cookies. Shall we?
Sift half a cup (65 grams) of confectioners sugar over half a cup (110 grams) of butter.
Cream the butter and sugar mixture until light and fluffy. Oh yes. Good things take time. I promise your patience shall be rewarded. Scrape the bowl once to make sure the butter and sugar is properly combined. Scraping is good.
Add 1 cup (130 grams) of flour, 1/8 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract at once and mix for 15 seconds on low.
Scrape the bowl again! Mix for a minute and we are done!
Transfer the dough to a plastic cling wrapped surface and make a log. cover it with cling wrap.
Refrigerate the dough for an hour. Even over-nite is fine.
Cut the dough into half inch thick cookies.
Bake in a preheated 350F/180C oven for 22-25 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. When they start to brown, they are done. Have an eye as they can go from brown to burnt very fast!
Transfer to a cooling rack for 15-20 minutes.
And Voila! The best cookies of my lifetime!
Long live the tea shops. Amen.
- ½ Cup (110 grams) Butter at room temperature
- ½ Cup (65 grams) Confectioners Sugar
- 1 Cup (130 grams) All purpose flour
- ⅛ teaspoon Salt
- ½ teaspoonPure Vanilla Extract
- Sift sugar over butter and cream until light and fluffy.
- Add the flour, salt and vanilla at once and mix until combined.
- Transfer the dough to a cling wrapped surface and make a log. cover it with cling wrap.
- Refrigerate the dough for an hour.
- In the mean time Preheat the oven to 350F/180C
- Cut the dough into half inch thick cookies.
- Bake in a preheated 350F/180C oven for 22-25 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. When they start to brown, they are done. Have an eye as they can go from brown to burnt very fast!
- Transfer to a cooling rack for 15-20 minutes.
hi suguna …I tried your recipe it came out so good…can i use wheat flour in place of maida
Hi Suganya, I have never tried with atta. But I think it will work. Just add a pinch of baking powder to keep the biscuits lite as atta will otherwise be very dense.
thank you for your response….will try and share my experience…
Hi Suguna! So I just made the biscuits and they turned out absolutely delicious! However, I followed the recipe to the tee – 2cm diameter, 1/2 inch wide and I got 40 cookies out of it, but they seem quite small. I used cake flour as we don’t have maida in South Africa. Are they supposed to be small biscuits? Can I in future double the recipe and make them say 5cm diameter? Would the baking time change? Thanks! 🙂
Hi Suraya, Yeah the biscuits are small in size. They are small so the edges turn quite crispy.
Hi there! I know that your recipe calls for all purpose flour (is it maida?), but here in South Africa there is no such thing as “all purpose flour”. We have cake flour and self-raising flour. Which can I use?
Hi Suraya. Yes. Its maida. Cake flour should work.
Self raising flour has leavening agents added , so dont use that for this recipe.
Thank you! 🙂 I will rate the recipe when I make it this weekend!
Hello mam… Your website is one of the pearl found in the sea. I tries your Annapoorna samba and my family loved it.. I am new to baking.. I just have a doubt…is it necessary to keep the dough in the fridge? If so please let me know mam… I just want to clarify it..
Hi Antony, Yes. refrigerating the dough is required.
Read this column about butter biscuits. Thanks. Please let me know if baking powder or baking soda is not essential for this recipe.
Not needed.
I follow your instructions completely. I am so happy with the way it turned out.. tastes awesome
Thank you!
Can I use normal white sugar to confectioners sugar
Confectioners sugar has ingredients like corn starch added to it. If you dont have confectioners sugar, best substitute will be to powder your normal sugar really fine and then use it.
Houston we have a problem. Firstly I must confess I am much better at eating sweets than making them. However the comments left on this recipe gave me the hope to try. I followed the recipe as per instruction. The mixture was loose. However when put in fridge went solid. Just pieces and put in oven. All melted and became one sheet. Don’t get me wrong they smell awesome. Just waiting for it to finish cooking however please can you guide me where have I gone wrong???? I followed recipe in grams just so you know as in UK. Help!!! Desperate to taste butter cookies that other guys have been enjoying from this page! All help appreciated. Nish
OHOH! sorry about that Nish. This is a foolproof recipe Nish. Did you measure exactly? The following things could have happened. Did you add any water? Or did you add too much sugar or butter?
Firstly although melted into one sheet they taste gorgeous, melt straight in the mouth so trust me even though they don’t look like cookies they have not gone to waste!
Secondly I believe I did follow the recipe and with no knowledge in the area the only thing I can think is maybe too much butter.
I will give it another try however my first attempt may not have been appeasing to the eye but definitely had my taste buds doing Balle Balle! Thank you!
Houston we have a problem. Firstly I must confess I am much better at eating sweets than making them. However the comments left on this recipe gave me the hope to try. I followed the recipe as per instruction. The mixture was loose. However when put in fridge went solid. Just pieces and put in oven. All melted and became one sheet. Don’t get me wrong they smell awesome. Just waiting for it to finish cooking however please can you guide me where have I gone wrong???? I followed recipe in grams just so you know as in UK. Help!!! Desperate to taste butter cookies that other guys have been enjoying from this page! All help appreciated. Nish
sorry about that. In baking measurement needs to be very precise. Very Very precise. even an extra 10-15 gram can change the recipe drastically.
Hi mam, All the recipes I ve tried from ur blog was super hit and this cookies also turned out good.. I don’t know what’s the magic u were doing with the dishes.. U r my biggest cooking inspiration Suguna madam… Lots of love to you and keep rocking…. Thank u so so much for sharing such wonderful recipes with correct measurements… ?
Thank you so much Krithika. Your comment means a lot to me. I am really glad that you like the recipes.
I did it. It worked wonderful. You have turned me a fan of your recipes.
Thank you so much Meera.
Hi Suguna Vinoth,
Today i tried this recipe and it came out really good. Thank u so much for sharing this recipe. I am a great follower of ur blog. Have tried many dishes in ur blog. Thank u so much ??
Thank you Sravanthi. Really glad you like the recipe.
How many cookies in a batch?
You can see it mentioned in the recipe section. It makes 40 cookies.
Hi Suguna,
The recipe and pics look great.
I wanted to make these cookies today but have two questions, what kind of butter do we use, salted or unsalted, and is it alright to make the dough in a bread maker?
Also, is it ok to make the dough by hand after beating the butter and sugar with a whisk? I do not own a stand mixer
Thanks in advance
Hi Sudha,
Its unsalted butter thats used in the recipe.
I don’t know if cookies can be made in a bread maker. I doubt that. You will have to bake in an oven / OTG.
If you dont have a stand mixer, you can use a hand mixer. But using hand to mix might heat up the butter starting the butter to melt and the the dough will become gloopy.
Hi suguna,
Thanks for responding, I just got the unsalted butter to room temperature. I’m determined to make these today 🙂
Makes sense to not use your hand. I do have a convection oven and can bake the cookies in the oven.
I just wanted to know if I can use the bread maker to mix the dough. We have a dough setting on the bread maker that I use to make chapathi dough. I’m wondering if I can use it for the cookie dough as well?
If not, I’d have to get a stand/hand mixer then, I don’t have either of them.
Hi Sudha, you can make the cookies in the convection oven. regarding bread maker, I am not sure how that will work out. May be you can try!
Hi Suguna,
The cookies turned out delicious. I missed these since moving to the US last year. Thanks a ton!
So, being impatient to wait and feeling extra confident, I went ahead and doubled the quantities and used my bread maker for the dough.
Mistook ‘refrigerate’ to ‘freeze’ when I read the recipe and noticed I made a mistake about 20 mins after freezing the dough logs. Took them out and it was already semi-hard.
First log crumbled a little, second log was perfect. Although, I’m not sure, maybe, if we’re in time crunch, 15 mins of freezing might also do. I’ll try this the next time.
Saved 2/3rd of a log. We fought over the cookies among the two of us and have none left. And, this is my first time baking cookies.
Thanks so much for this recipe Suguna.
Thank you so much! Really glad you liked the recipe.
Loved this recipe. It was simple to make and turned out really good!
Thanks Anna. Really glad that the biscuits turned out good!
So glad I have come across this recipe..
Appa loves butter biscuit (and we can’t find good ones in Aus) and since its school hols for me, I will make them tonight as a surprise for him..
Will update you on the result!
TRIED THIS TODAY AND IT TURNED OUT YUMMY.. THANK YOU MAM!
Thank you Preethi!
Thanks for the interesting recipe…
Can I replace all purpose flour with wheat? In that case refrigeration works?
I have never tried with wheat flour!
I just baked the cookies mam. It was just awesome and delicious. Thanks a ton! 🙂
Thanks Felcina. Glad you liked the Cookies. Enjoy!
Lovely share Suguna.. Have been hunting fir this recipe for a while…Finally landed safe to ur blog 🙂
Thank you!
U always rock??????
Very nice recipe.. semma soft semma easy and little uppu nice sweetness! ??????
But one question:
I felt it’s over buttery is there I can do it to make it less buttery! Since my husband loves butter biscuit! He told its little buttery! So want to make him as he likes but I don’t know how to make it like that!!
Please let me know?
But in personal I loved the butter flavor and my little one too! Thanks for that recipe!
Sorry missed the stars! ?
Thank you!. You can reduce a little butter next time and try to rest the dough in the fridge for a longer time. That might help.
Hi.. my question might sound stupid but pls bear with me as I’m new to baking.. I tried these and they turned out hard. I’m fighting that I might have got my measurements wrong. I used 1cup (it says 250ml on the cup) flour, 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup sugar. In your ingredients, the grams of sugar and butter is not same. Should i not be using same cups to measure my sugar and butter?
The gram measurement will differ for each and every ingredient. 1 cup of lets say cotton candy will weigh very less when compared to 1 cup of ordinary candy. The cup measurements are in volume whereas the grams are in weight.
Hi
I tried this recipe today and I used half of the measure you had mentioned. I felt mine got over baked though I took I left it only for 18 minutes. The whole biscuit became crispy and it was about to get hard. Could you please tell me what went wrong.
I think your oven is overheating. try to calibrate it.
Hi Suguna!
I’m a huge fan of your website and have been fortunate enough to be able to cook/bake some amazing things thanks to your recipes! I love your writing style and the presentation! And, your recipes just give out ‘perfect’ results!
Coming to these biscuits, i prepared them twice and boy, were they amazing! I have a little doubt though. In case one would want to make biscuits of different shapes (a star, a square, etc) is it possible to roll out the dough and use a cookie cutter? Cause, I felt the freezing changed the consistency, so rolling out couldn’t be exactly possible, right ?
Thank you so much Anitha. These cookies are difficult to roll because of their consistency. Will post rolled cookies recipe soon.
I made these for a small dinner party to accompany cherries in rosé and vanilla syrup (with mascarpone). These tea biscuits cooked beautifully! The recipe worked for me the first time (and I am easily distracted and sometimes over-bake cookies, so thanks for the reminder to keep an eye on them). They added a lovely, buttery crunch to the fruity sweetness of the cherries. So happy to find such a yummy recipe for cookies that is egg-free and nut-free. Delicious!
Thank you so much. Glad that you liked the recipe. Happy Cooking.
Can we use the “handheld” electric dough mixer as i don’t have the food processer.
sure.
calories is mentioned for 40 cookies or for 1 cookie?
Not for one. Its for 40 cookies.
I made this for my mother and she loved it a lot. This biscuit has a wonderful texture. Thanks Suguna for posting this recipe 🙂
Thats so nice Manjula.
You are so generous!!!Tried this and it came so perfectly!!Thank you!My reference guide nowadays!!?
Thank you Subi!
so nice .. can you post a video about this pls ?
I will do that soon Srividya. We moved recently to HK and dont have an oven here. The kitchen is too tiny to have an oven.. so whenever i do a trip home, i will definetely do this.
Superb recipe suguna… the biscuits were so nice and my son loved them. Once again thanks for sharing the recipe
Thank You!
Thank You!
Presenting the biscuits on the newspaper gives the perfect touch to the tea stall butter cookies recipe 🙂 thanks for sharing the recipe. trying it now
Hi Suguna
I am planning to try this .I have a doubt here … I own a Morphy Richards OTG where in they have specified that preheat should be in toast mode for 10 mins always at 250 degrees … That’s basically the setting of that oven model .
Now for this recipe .. once I preheat my oven ( as mentioned above) …I should be changing the temperature and timing setting as mentioned in recipe …. Should I be changing the mode also to “Bake” rather than “toast” I used for pre heating . ?
yeah. you will bake the biscuits in bake mode. you will have to change the settings from “toast” to “bake”
Hi..looks yummy…I don’t have an oven.. Can I steam this or is there any other way to try this.. Thanks in advance.
Steaming will melt the butter Ramya. Sorry, I do not know of any other method other than baking in the oven.
Shall I produce in large scales give some idea about machines thanks expects your reply
kanagaraj
Sure. You can double or triple.
Hi Suguna,
Can we make these using wheat flour instead of Maida? Will it be good?
aww really a wonderful recipe… loved it..
what would pack in snack box instead of biscuits….. for my 3 yr kid… pls help..
I used to send fruits for my son when he was in preschool.
I tried this. It came out really well. Your measurements were very accurate. I find all the receipes I want from your website. Your receipes have been a life saver for me. You are doing a wonderful job!
Thank you so much Amma. Your words mean so much to me !
Hey thank you for posting this
Looks Yum and easy too
I have made the batter and put in the fridge
Waiting to bake them
Quick question : is the dough soft when we mix them or should it be like chappathi dough by then ? Mine’s pretty wobbly… had to beat it into a log !!
The dough is soft Preethi. If its really hard to make a log add a tablespoon of flour/maida. Add very little though. Use cling wrap to make a log. That would be easy.
It turned out really superb I did use cling wrap 🙂
I was so apprehensive earlier
The butter froze in the fridge and it became a perfectly “cuttable” log – I forgot that would happen
Enjoying the tea biscuits immensely now
🙂 Enjoy Preethi! Hi five!
Dear Suguna,
The recipe says confectioners sugar. But if we don’t have it can we grind thenormal sugar?? And use instead?
Sure Gurmeet. You can use ground powder sugar.
Hi Suguna,
There are some sites you trust, some you dont. This has become one of my go to sites and I’ve become an ardent follower now!! Tried these cookies at 11 pm and my 3 yr old couldnt wait for these to come out. Tasted Good and its a keeper for sure!! Awesome!
Thank you Sharon for writing in. It means a lot to me. I am so happy that your little toddler enjoyed these cookies. It must have been a moment of joy! Thank you my dear!
Hi Suguna
Tried these gorgeous buscuits some time back and they turned our rock hard qnd didn’t swell either. What would be the reason behind ? Measured the ingredients correctly. The only thing is i used homemade butter instead of store brought. Please help.
I am really sorry dear that the biscuits turned out hard after all the effort. This is a very simple fool proof recipe that has been tried by a lot of viewers to excellent results. I am thinking what might have gone wrong. What about the oven temperature and timing? Did you weigh the ingredients?
Hi geeta, if you have a convection microwave oven of any brand use it in convection mode with 200 degree for 15 to 20mins,
Thank you Umar.
Thanks for sharing this recipe. I made this a few times and it was a big hit. My folks loved it. Simple and amazing recipe.
Thank you Kavi. I am glad your family loved the bakery style butter biscuits / salt biscuit recipe.
Hi mam is this salt biscuit we buy in chennai and surrounding areas tea biscuit…..
You are right Kalavathi.
🙂
Thank you for the easiest cookie recipe. Cant believe just three ingredients did the magic.
Thank you Krithika. Its my favorite cookie too!
Could you please let me know how to make this biscuit using microwave oven
Hi Geetha, I have never tried making this in microwave.
hey sugs! this is awesome. congrats on the blog. such mouth watering pics and recipes. love the clean layout and nutritional info:) Ive been looking for this butter biscuit recipe everywhere, thanks for posting:)
Oh my god! Look who stopped by! U made my day my dear!
This is one of my favorites!! me and couple of my friends go to this small irani tea shop and they have these biscuits. 1 Re each!! 🙂
I am going to try this recipe at home!!
Thank you so much Nitin! This one sure brings memories!
Mine too. These biscuits bring lot of memories for everyone. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by to comment.
Lucky man.. I pay 2Rs. everytime I have this at Sharon (80ft road Tippasandra junction)..
Jokes apart, won’t be going there for the biscuit. Made this at home courtesy Suguna and am lovin’ it.
Thank you so much Tara. I am glad you liked it.