This was meant to be my contribution to Zorra's new event Baking Bread Day a follow up to World Bread Day - where bread bakers bake a themed bread for the first weekend on each month. This month's theme was Baking with Herbs. I am a week late for the deadline, but this was what I had planned for the event if I got around to it.

Potato Rosemary Breadrolls. These are wonderfully flavourful and aromatic! The aroma of rosemary infused with the flavours of tiny roasted garlic bits all folded together into mashed potato softened dough finished with a nice crust! I'm really pleased with it's success - finally I've baked something that is good again! (I became quite uninspired after my beloved dog died and it showed in my various failed baking attempts. But I think I'm getting better... ) These bread rolls are great to have on its own or with your favourite bowl of soup! This recipe is from The Bread Baker's Apprentice : Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart.

I also wanted to improve on my bread scoring skills and the only thing that came to mind when I thought last minute alternative lamé was to use an eyebrow razor. I recently bought a new pack so I grabbed a new (un-used) one and scored away. The results were better than my previous attempts - the razor isn't perfect but I guess it's a better start.

Also here's a quick and easy way to peel potato skins off boiled potatoes - it is a breeze! The clip is in Japanese but it's pretty self-explanatory.

Tags: Aromatic, Savoury, Mashed Potatoes, Garlic, Rosemary, BBD #01

Happy New Year! It's been a while since I blogged - I got lazy during the holidays.

Wanted to blog about our Christmas lunch but was too tired from all the cooking (I cooked for 2 days) and people started eating as soon as the food was ready, so I couldn't take any nice photos of the wonderful meal. I was quite pleased with my turkey, it was quite juicy and moist. Maybe this year I shall be more organised time-wise and take some photos.

Today we have Peanut Butter Choco Chippers and with an effort to be healthier I've lowered sugar and fat protions and added wheat germ in it. Fear not, the result isn't a dry healthy cookie. It has enough sweetness to it and has actually a soft and tender crumb! It has an overall quite chocolatey flavour because I used chopped chocolate instead of chocolate chips, the result would be different if chocolate chips were used. In this case the peanut butter dough and tiny chocolate crumbs melded together - so it's great for chocolate lovers!

So after the Peppermint cookie disappointment I had to do something to make up for my dissatisfied food tasting crew at Blackmagic Design. So I stuck to something I know will work and will make them believe I was worthy again. The good ol' Chocolate Chip Cookie. And since it's the festive season, I decided to give this ol'skool classic a nuskool makeover - just for Christmas, I added chopped cranberries, pistachios and white chocolate chips for that red, green and white - the corporate colours of the season.

As hoped, everyone was pleased and renewed their trust in me as their in-house pro-bono baker. Woo!!

Like it or not, you can't deny it. With the streets decorated with merry hollies and carols in the air, it's coming. With so many Christmas baking recipes and ideas - I couldn't quite decide which to attempt first for this season. I was thinking Candy Canes - but a friend said they wouldn't be appreciated because they're so easily available. So I thought Peppermint cookies? Why not? Never had Peppermint in a cookie - unless it was with a cream filling. And so I began the Peppermint cookie experiment.

They were meant to be twisted up (like candy canes) but the dough was too soft and broke apart too easily while I was rolling them into strips. I didn't want to add more flour (in case the final baked product got too dry) and I was using my brand new Silpat - which was already making my dough rolling easier. Silpat is wonderful! I haven't used it in the oven (still a little skeptical) but I love the non-stick surface, and it's all light, thin and so easy to wash! I bought mine for SGD$49.90 at Shermay Cooking School. It was a bit costly but it works so great I am actually considering getting another. So back to the cookie dough... I had them all rolled up into 1 inch balls and so I decided to make things simple and just bake them as they were, press them down with my thumb and sprinkled sugar over it.

Baking the cookies were the best part, it was like peppermint aromatherapy. The sweet vapours of peppermint and sugar embrace you when you opened the oven to take the cookies out. Eating them were on the other hand - not bad but really unusual. You can feel the trail of peppermint vapour going down from your mouth into your stomach. I might have added too much peppermint in this regard. I realise now why I've never had peppermint in a cookie - the medium of carrying peppermint should be in a liquid form or a candy form. To have it in a solid cookie medium was weird. It felt chalky and dry but it wasn't dry it was a moist crumb, but it just felt that way.

So... I think the next time, I would sandwich the cookies with a peppermint cream filling instead.

Cutout cookies are cute! They're a lot more time-consuming to make but they're also a lot of fun. I used the recipe from the special interest publication of Better Homes and Gardens : Christmas Cookies. The recipe's Vanilla Rounds - but I decided shapes would be more fun. The little black dots on the cookies are there not because my camera lens is dirty - they're wonderful vanilla seeds from Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Bean Paste. I had some trouble icing the cookies because my nozzle kept getting stuck with dried up micro bits of icing sugar - which was a cause of real pain and frustration!! So remember to over your icing with a damp cloth when not in use or the surface will begin to dry and that's what will clog up the icing cones.

I was lucky my sister-in-law Kresna dropped by for dinner and chipped in to help. We made 100+ cookies and they're really cute and it was well worth the effort and icing frustration. The result was a little too sweet with the royal icing and all... I would cut the amount of sugar back in future batches.

I was about 4 or 5 when I finally got Mum to bake me Gingerbread Man cookies. We were Christmas shopping at Metro and while lining up to pay I saw Gingerbread man cookie cutters! I squealed with delight and begged Mum to get them so we could make Gingerbread Man cookies like in the storybook she's been reading to me. Mum at that point of time never made cutout cookies before and didn't have the recipe for the Gingerbread Man, and her demanding little client insisted that the cookies had to look the ones in the storybook. My brothers weren't helping either. Poor Mum.

The cookies she baked were peanut butter cutouts without frosting. We didn't have a electric mixer then and she had to cream everything by hand. I wanted so badly to help but I think I was more trouble then. She had really worked hard to please her little clients. Little me was disappointed that they weren't frosted and I think my brothers and I broke my Mum's heart when we said it was too hard. And consequently I was not allowed to eat them because I had a sore throat and the peanut butter cookies were too heaty. I love my Mum for making them. She worked so hard on the cookies just for her little kids.

So fast forward 25 years. With the help of modern technology, I am going to make gingerbread man cookies for my Mum!

This is my own version of the chocolate chip cookie. Made with whole wheat flour that retains all the wholeness, nutrition and goodness of the wheat grain (bran, germ, and endosperm). It gives the cookie a wonderfully fluffy, chewy and lightly crispy texture. This is also lowered fat - so less guilt. My favourite ingredients were the Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract and Bean Paste. The potently intense flavours are to die for! They are more expensive than the regular ones but it's highly concentrated and the aroma takes you to heaven! I bought mine from Shermay Cooking School at Chip Bee Gardens.