These cookies are herbivorous

Herbs such as basil and lavender find their way into the festive menu of baker Ayushi Shah, who runs Icing on Top, a bakery for miniature goodies. Not bad at all, opines Phorum Dalal

These cookies are herbivorous

On Dussehra, when we walked into office, our heads hanging low at the idea of working on a holiday, one little brown bag and one little white bag sat on my desk. We huddled around and glanced into it.u00a0Twenty three year-old baker Ayushi Shah, who runs Icing On Top from her kitchen at Masjid Bunder, had sent us goodies to taste from her latest menu.u00a0

(Clockwise u00a0from bottom) Lavender, Cinnamon, Chocolate and Hazelnut, and Basil and Lemon cookies. Pic/ Dutta Kumbhar

For the first time that day, we smiled. Excited fingers opened the neat plastic boxes. We started with the Basil and Chocochip cookie. A colleague called it confusion between pasta and a cookie. A real blast of cool basil along with chocolate was one of the most unique flavours we had tasted in a while.
Next up were the Lemon Cookies, mini yellowish balls topped with a baby pink icing. They melted in the mouth so effortlessly, filling the palate with a lemony zest and craving for more. Along the same lines, were Cinnamon cookies, Hazelnut and Chocolate, and Lavender, Lemon and Poppy Seeds.

While the cinnamon made its impact and hazelnut created a few stirs, we couldn’t taste any lavender, which the baker said was supposed to be a subtle dash. On trying it again, we could finally guess the presence of lavender, but that’s like knowing the answer to a leaked exam paper. We wish it had a tad bit more flavouring.

Shah came up with the concept of fusing herbs in her sweet offerings after she came across an online article on French cooking. “Basil goes with anything and it is one of my favourite herbs. The French use a lot of lavender in their cooking, and that’s how I experimented with the menu. I’m going to also work with rosemary and thyme,” she says.

We loved all her stuff for one common experience — the way each cookie melted in our mouths so ever flawlessly. The cookies are priced at Rs 900 to Rs 1,400 per kg, the Chocolate Basil Cookie is priced at Rs 40, while The Oaty Caramel Crunch is priced at Rs 900 per kg.