Nan-e berenji
Persian cookies for Nowruz, the New Year celebrated at the spring equinox. They are made with rice flour, which gives an entirely different texture from wheat: they dissolve in the mouth like fine sand. They must stay white after baking — browned, they lose their delicacy and the taste of rose. So they bake briefly at a low temperature, after a long chill.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Rose syrup 10 min
- Cooling the syrup 15 min
- Dough 15 min
- Chilling 90 min
- Baking 20 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneMake the syrup and cool it
Warm the sugar with the water, stirring, until it dissolves, bring to the boil and boil 3 minutes — about 10 minutes in all. Take off the heat, add the rose water and cool completely; set in a bowl of cold water, this takes about 15 minutes. Warm syrup melts the butter and the dough turns greasy instead of short, spreading on the tray.
Ingredients: 150 g sugar · 80 ml water · 2 tbsp rose water
Beat the butter with the yolk
Beat the soft clarified butter with the yolk and cardamom for 5 minutes until whitish and fluffy. Aerating the butter is the only thing that lightens these cookies — there is no raising agent.
Ingredients: 350 g rice flour · 180 g clarified butter · 1 pcs egg yolk · 6 pcs cardamom · 1 pinch salt
Add the syrup in a thin stream
Pour in the cold syrup gradually, beating all the time, until smooth. Added all at once it splits the butter into lumps that stay in the cookies as greasy patches.
Ingredients: 150 g sugar · 80 ml water · 2 tbsp rose water
Work in the rice flour by hand
Add the rice flour with the salt and knead by hand into a soft, smooth dough that does not stick to your palms. Rice flour has no gluten, so there is no risk of overworking — but it is very absorbent, so add it gradually.
Ingredients: 350 g rice flour · 180 g clarified butter · 1 pcs egg yolk · 6 pcs cardamom · 1 pinch salt
Soft, smooth and not sticky — add the flour gradually.Chill the dough an hour and a half
Wrap in film and chill 90 minutes, ideally overnight. Rice flour absorbs moisture slowly; dough used at once is gritty in the wrong way and cracks as it is shaped.
Ingredients: 350 g rice flour · 180 g clarified butter · 1 pcs egg yolk · 6 pcs cardamom · 1 pinch salt
Shape balls and press a pattern with a fork
Roll walnut-sized balls, flatten slightly and press a crosshatch or radiating pattern with a fork. Sprinkle with poppy seeds (or top some with ground pistachios). The pattern is tradition but also practical — the cookies crack along the grooves rather than at random.
Ingredients: 1 tbsp poppy seeds · 1 tbsp pistachios
A fork crosshatch — the cracks follow the grooves.Bake briefly at a low temperature
Bake 15–18 minutes at 150°C, until the bases just turn golden and the tops crack but stay white. Browned tops mean the cookies have hardened and lost their shortness.
Ingredients: 1 tbsp poppy seeds · 1 tbsp pistachios
White on top, bases barely gold — any longer is too long.Cool on the tray
Cool on the tray at least 15 minutes before moving them. Hot nan-e berenji crumble at the lightest touch; only cold do they gain structure, and even then they stay very fragile.
Ingredients: 1 tbsp poppy seeds · 1 tbsp pistachios
Before you start
Very fine rice flour
Coarse rice flour gives cookies that crunch like sand. Look for finely milled flour — in Asian or Persian shops — and sieve it first. Do not confuse it with glutinous rice flour, which makes them rubbery.
Clarified butter, not ordinary
Clarified butter has no water, so the cookies are shorter and stay white. Ordinary butter brings moisture and milk proteins that brown in the oven and make the cookies harder.
Three weeks in a tin
They keep three weeks in an airtight tin layered with paper. They are very fragile — move them with a flat spatula, not fingers, and do not stack them high.
