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Baked Ooty Varkey is a popular snack from Ooty, Tamil Nadu. It’s a baked pastry that has mild sweetness, a little salty and very flaky.
Ooty or Udhagamandalam is a hill station in Tamil Nadu and is famous for its Varkey biscuits or pastry that the locals bake and it is exported and also imitated in many bakeries. I can still remember our many vacations spent in Coonoor and our visit to Ooty during the trip.
The trip is not complete if you don’t’ carry back these biscuits that are sold there. A typical tourist spot, you get all those homemade chocolates, varky biscuits, and plum cakes. For almost 5 to 6 years during my high school, our summer vacation was always Coonoor where Daddy had his guest house.
So we would make a day’s trip to Ooty and the entire journey was such a memorable one, that thinking back makes me so poignant.
When we picked up Ooty Varkey, those thoughts were rushing out and I was back in my childhood remembering all those trips. Making a quick internet search for this recipe lead nowhere.
I was surprised that nobody has blogged on a proper Varkey recipe except for some handful of recipes that didn’t seem authentic too. There are some videos of the whole process though it didn’t have a recipe.
I requested Gayathri to experiment and give us a foolproof recipe for us to make. She was kind enough to do and gave us a recipe that worked fine. She had experimented a couple of times before arriving at the perfect recipe that yielded a flaky Varkey.
She was supposed to join us for this Mega BM, however, she said she will post it along with us and I am only glad she is. After her research and experiment, she said the bakeries use a day old dough while making a fresh batch. The bakers dilute the old dough and incorporate while kneading the fresh batch before setting it for overnight fermentation.
I ended up keeping the dough in the fridge overnight and almost the day through the next day as it became tough for me to get to this. However, the final baked taste was awesome!
I was in quite a dilemma on deciding the recipe for both the blogs as there was only one recipe for me to try and the other ones were with custard and the other one was deep fried. So I had decided I would post plain Varkey and chocolate stuffed Varkey.
However something led to something and I ended up with a different Varkey for Cooking 4 all Seasons, you can read about it there. So Ooty Varkey Plain and with Chocolate is my Day 6 in BM#104 Sweets & Snacks.
I must confess that out of the 52 dishes that I have made for this Mega BM, this was the only dish that my boys completed within a few hours of making.
Week 1 – Sweets (Indian Traditional Sweets)
Day 1 is Arcot Makkan Peda
Day 2 is Burhanpur Jalebi
Day 3 is Ghevar
Day 4 is Motichoor Ladoo
Day 5 is Ghotua Ladoo
Day 6 is Bandar Laddu
Week 2 – Snacks from the same State (Andhra)
Day 1 is Kara Sev
Day 2 is Kobbari Chegodilu
Day 3 is Karam Gavvalu
Day 4 is Garlic Kara Sev
Day 5 is Venna Murukulu
Day 6 is Palakayalu
Week 3 – Snacks of our choice (Vada Varieties)
Day 1 is Ponk Vada
Day 2 is Palak Vada
Day 3 is Cabbage Vada
Day 4 is Sabudana Vada
Day 5 is Mulai Keerai Masala Vadai
Day 6 is Instant Rava Vada
Week 4 – Mandatory Week
Day 1 is Andhra – Palli Pappu Chekkalu
Day 2 is Gujarat – Baked Handvo
Day 3 is Madhya Pradesh – Ratlami Masala Sev
Day 4 is Maharashtra -Kothimbir Vadi
Day 5 is Rajasthan – Kalmi Vada
Pin this for Later!
Step By Step Pictures to make Baked Chocolate Ooty Varkey
Ooty Varkey | Baked Chocolate Ooty Varkey
Ingredients Needed:
For The Dough:
150 gms All Purpose Flour / Maida
50 gms Sugar
3 tbsp Cooking Oil
1/4 tsp Salt
Water as needed
For the Layering:
Cooking Oil (I used about a cup or little more)
Maida as needed (I used about 3 /4 cup almost)
For the Stuffing
Dark Semi Chocolate Chips (you can use whatever flavour of choice)
How to make Ooty Varkey
In a bowl, mix together maida, salt, sugar, and oil to form a crumbly mixture.
Add enough water to make it into a soft pliable dough.
Cover and set aside for two hours. You can even let it sit overnight at room temperature. Preheat oven to 180°C.
Take the dough onto the counter.
Apply generous oil so that it doesn’t stick to the counter.
Roll it into a thin rectangle which should be transparent enough to see through.
Pour two or three tablespoons of oil on the rectangle and add three tablespoons of flour.
Mix well to make a spreadable paste. Add more oil or flour if needed.
Spread the paste evenly on the entire rectangle.
Fold 1/3rd of the rectangle inside and fold the opposite side also inside to form a letter fold.
Now pour more oil and add flour and make a paste and cover the surface entirely.
Again fold twice to make a letter fold and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Now roll it into a thin rectangle again.
Slice it into 5 equal stripes using a pizza cutter.
Lift each stripe, pull some dough from it and roughly make it into a round shape pinching the top.
If you are stuffing, then place the chocolate over the strips and roughly cover it up.
Arrange them on a tray.
Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes or until the varkis are brown. I baked in a microwave convection oven and after 45 mins at 185, I had to bake for 5 more mins at 200 C
Allow to cool and store it well.
Notes & Variations:
I left it overnight in the fridge and then at room temperature for almost 7 to 8 hours.
The shapes of varkis can vary. You can pinch portions out of the stripes into balls and bake. This will give you a rounded varki.
You can also slice them into neat squares or rectangles and bake, which will look like puff pastry.
But the rustic pinched version is the most common one available.
- 150gms All Purpose Flour / Maida
- 50gms Sugar
- 3tbsp Cooking Oil
- 1/4tsp Salt
- Water as needed (I used about 1/2 cup)
- Cooking OilI used about a cup or little more
- Maida as neededI used about 3/4 cup almost
- Dark Semi Chocolate Chipsyou can use whatever flavour of choice
-
In a bowl, mix together maida, salt, sugar, and oil to form a crumbly mixture.
-
Add enough water to make it into a soft pliable dough.
-
Cover and set aside for two hours. You can even let it sit overnight at room temperature. Preheat oven to 180°C.
-
Take the dough onto the counter.
-
Apply generous oil so that it doesn't stick to the counter.
-
Roll it into a thin rectangle which should be transparent enough to see through.
-
Pour two or three tablespoons of oil on the rectangle and add three tablespoons of flour.
-
Mix well to make a spreadable paste. Add more oil or flour if needed.
-
Spread the paste evenly on the entire rectangle.
-
Fold 1/3rd of the rectangle inside and fold the opposite side also inside to form a letter fold.
-
Now pour more oil and add flour and make a paste and cover the surface entirely.
-
Again fold twice to make a letter fold and let it rest for 10 minutes.
-
Now roll it into a thin rectangle again.
-
Slice it into 5 equal stripes using a pizza cutter.
-
Lift each stripe, pull some dough from it and roughly make it into a round shape pinching the top.
-
If you are stuffing, then place the chocolate over the strips and roughly cover it up.
-
Arrange them on a tray.
-
Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes or until the varkis are brown. I baked in a microwave convection oven and after 45 mins at 185, I had to bake for 5 more mins at 200 C
-
Allow to cool and store it well.
I left it overnight in the fridge and then at room temperature for almost 7 to 8 hours.
The shapes of varkis can vary. You can pinch portions out of the stripes into balls and bake.
This will give you a rounded varkay. You can also slice them into neat squares or rectangles and bake, which will look like puff pastry.
But the rustic pinched version is the most common one available.
Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#104
The post Ooty Varkey | Baked Chocolate Ooty Varkey appeared first on Spice your Life!.
Posted in: Indian Cook
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