Are you a smart cookie? We all love a good biscuit as an afternoon snack but do you know where they originated? We celebrate Biscuit Day on 29th May 2018 with a few 'crumbs' of information about the humble crumble...
It is believed that biscuits were first invented as a travelling snack for those at sea. The hardy snack provided sailors with much needed nutrition and they were easy-to-store and had a long shelf-life.
Many early physicians believed that most medicinal problems were associated with digestion. Therefore, to avoid illness, a daily consumption of a biscuit was considered good for health.
The fist biscuits made would have been hard, dry, and unsweetened. This was because they were most often cooked after bread, in a cooling bakers' oven making them a cheap commodity for the poor.
By the seventh century AD, Persian cooks had learnt the technique of sweetening biscuits with fruit and honey. One of the earliest spiced biscuits was gingerbread, in French, pain d'épices, meaning "spice bread", which were brought to Europe in 992.
By medieval times, biscuits were made from a sweetened, spiced paste of breadcrumbs and then baked (e.g., gingerbread). King Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart) left for the Third Crusade (1189–92) with "biskit of muslin", which was a mixed corn compound of barley, rye, and bean flour.
At the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the daily allowance on board a Royal Navy ship was one pound of biscuit plus one gallon of beer.
Gingerbread became widely available by the 18th century. The British biscuit firms of McVitie's, Carr's, Huntley & Palmer, and Crawfords were all established by 1850.
Today, biscuits the global biscuit market is estimated to be valued at roughly $76,384.9 million dollars with our firm favourites being Plain followed by chocolate, sour cream, cheese and spiced and fruit and nuts.
(source: transparencymarketresearch.com)
Whether it's a gooey American cookie or a crunchy British biscuit, curl up in your armchair today with a cup of something hot and a biscuit, or two, or three! And what better excuse to curl up with younger ones and read a good book with cookies and a glass of milk? Here's our favourites of the moment:
Melody's Unicorn by Richard Swan
Melody is on a quest to discover her real identity and purpose when she encounters a dryad on Ealing Common! After hearing the dryad's prophecy, Melody's day becomes even stranger when she spots a unicorn in Oxford Street, and follows it into the mysterious Otherworld. Returning to the human world, further adventures finally lead Melody to Tower Bridge and a confrontation with a dragon...
Melody's Unicorn is the first volume in a new children's fantasy trilogy which continues with Melody’s Dragon and Melody’s World.
The Princess Gardener by Michael Strelow
The Princess Gardener is the story of a young girl who is a princess by accident of birth. Her passion lies outside the castle, tending the gardens. But castle duties call more and more often, and her parents insist she learn what she calls "the princess business." Reluctantly, she curtseys and bows and smiles her way through the empty rituals of the kingdom, but every day she longs for the smell of the earth.
A chance encounter causes the princess to switch lives with a young farm girl, who is her exact likeness. When people begin to fall ill, the girls learn that the source of the sickness is covered-up pollution in the water supply.
Will they discover their true capabilities and save the kingdom, or are the girls' lives about to become very complicated?
Emajen by Ashley Ledigo
Emajen is a world, similar to Earth. Doodland is a world where all the sketches that human beings doodle spring to life. Crevitos is a cruel and beautiful Creation, with multi-world domination and devastation in mind.
Two youngsters from Earth, Destiny and Anthony, become embroiled in a complex expedition to save Emajen from Crevitos’ tyranny and his growing army of almost invincible Creations.
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