When I get around to it I bake biscuits for the shop on Saturdays . . . and then aim to proffer them to customers instead of eat them all myself. Mr Dan Lepard’s Short and Sweet has provided many of the recipes for these biscuits – namely the double chocolate cookie and the ginger and spelt cookie this week I turned to his Guardian Weekend recipe.
There was a recipe book in my parents kitchen which was a collection of recipes submitted by residents of the village in which I grew up; my mum was the editor of this fine publication and someone else in the village provided pen and ink illustrations. Lots of these recipes reflect the provincial cooking ideas of the time; concepts of dinner party entertaining that should remain preserved in aspic, WI baking and the onset of the macrobiotic/wholefood school of cooking. I suspect that if you replayed the concept today the WI baking aspect would remain and there would be a surfeit of cupcake recipes. There was a recipe in this book for peanut cookies – and very fine it was too – Mr Lepard’s version is however even better, the rosemary almost tastes like ginger at first.
Today’s desktop biscuits haven’t yet been touched. There’s hope for a mid afternoon snack after all.
