Biscuit Recipes, Cookie Recipes , Biscotti where do they come from?
Published by Mattseo.com on 2010-07-19 11:47:07
Biscuit, Cookie , Biscotti what do you call them?
biscuit recipes or Cookies, as our friends across the pond generally call them, or even Biscotti as our Italian neighbours call them, fall into two distinct categories, savory or sweet. But whatever your chosen name or biscuit passion is, just the mention of the word will probably send a little ripple of excitement down your spine. The humble biscuit, or not so humble these days given the now extraordinary array of elaborate alternatives that exist, tend to be viewed as a little treat at any time of day. In fact it is difficult to think of a better accompaniment to the traditional British “Cuppa” than a good homemade biscuit. We British have certainly perfected the art to “Tea and Biscuits”, a tradition to be proud of, or do we still have a thing or two to learn?
The biscuit actually has and illustrious history which is both functional and frivolous depending on the nature of the biscuit itself. From the functional perspective early biscuits were hard and unsweetened and traditionally made up the staple diet of travelers, soldiers and sailors where the need was primarily nutritional and practical due to their ability to be stored for long periods of time
Sweetened biscuits of a more frivolous nature, originated in Persia many hundreds of years ago, where traditionally fruit and honey were used to sweeten the dough based products. Biscuits were gradually introduce into Europe over the centuries and as the quality of flour milling and the abundance of sugar improved, so did the nature, diversity and quality of sweet biscuits.
British biscuits tend to be more plain and “ordinary” than their European counterparts. However, the British love for biscuits is undeniable. I was browsing through the Mydish database of over 80,000 recipes the other day looking for a lovely biscuit to bake and give away as a “join-up” incentive at our stand at the Taste for London exhibition and a rough count came up with over 800 biscuit recipes. All of these have been submitted by the Mydish members, people like you and me, with a passion for food and the occasional biscuit. Now if this doesn’t demonstrates just how close the humble biscuit is to the hearts (and minds) of the British public, then I don’t know what does!
We seem to have taken on board the American love for cookies with a huge rise in the popularity of chocolate chip cookies followed by oatmeal and raisin cookies. If you look at more traditional British biscuits we have a lot of simple plain biscuit varieties- ginger biscuits, orange biscuits, lemon biscuits and even lavender and rosemary biscuits., We have a number of oat biscuits with different versions of flapjacks with a special leaning towards more healthy varieties such as our healthy oat bars
We have Swedish biscuits which are basically thin cinnamon biscuits and a number of Welsh varieties of Shortbread biscuits.
From the shop bought range, probably the nation’s two most popular sweet biscuits are the Rich Tea and Digestive, although I must say my very favourite is the Chocolate chip cookie Recipe on mydish mmm and it has to be homemade and chewy.
More biscuit recipes at mydish.co.uk
