Khatai cookies (Afghan cookies with cardamom and pistachio)

I made vegan cookies and I wasn't even planning to make vegan cookies. I was browsing the internet for a Afghan cookie recipe to make for a friend of A's who will be working in Afghanistan for 6 months. So Afghan cookies seemed a nice gift to take to her farewell party. Turned out that pretty much the only cookie recipe you can find on the internet is a vegan one. And as my regular readers should have realised by now I very rarely make something that is vegan. I love using butter and eggs too much ;)
The recipe for these Khatai cookies is very very easy, just mixing up some flour, sugar, cardamom and corn oil. After baking a little sprinkle with pistachio's et voilà: a typical Afghan cookie (at least I hope so, you never now for sure on the internet ;) This exact recipe can be found at a lot of recipe sites all over the internet. My source was asiarecipe.com but I'm not sure this is the original master recipe. If there are any Afghans reading my blog, please let me know if this is actually an Afghan recipe, if not I'd love to have one :)
I love cardamom a lot so I loved the strong spicy taste of the tablespoon of cardamom that went into the dough. Besides being very cardamom-y the cookie is very sweet because of the abundance of sugar. Strangely the cookies were soft on the outside (in a moist sand kind of way) and crunchy on the inside...maybe due to the use of oil?

Khatai cookies (from asiarecipe.com)

makes 28 cookies

1 ½ cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 tbs ground cardamom
¾ cup corn oil
pistachio's, finely ground or very finely chopped

Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
Mix the flour, sugar and cardamom togehter in a mixing bowl. Add the corn oil and mix well. Roll into 4 cm (1 ½ in) balls and place on the baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes (cookies will barely brown). Sprinkle with pistachio's while the cookies are hot. Allow to cool on the baking sheet.