The Bay of Biscuits

Position: LICKING THE SPOON

Note: Biscuits in English are cookies in American. Biscuits in American are scones in English. This blog is written (mostly) in English.

Biscuits form a crucial part of seafaring life. Hardtack, perhaps the oldest form of sailor’s biscuit, is actually a cracker made from flour and water and sometimes a little salt. Baked four times to ensure it is thoroughly dry, the result is a ‘molar breaker’ designed to last for years at sea. Which it did when properly stored. It can, in fact, last for 50 years in a cool, dry place. Such places on leaky wooden vessels were rare. Weevils and larvae wormed their way into the stores and extracting them from the biscuits became part of a sailor’s routine. Hardtack remained an essential part of the Royal Navy’s victualling until shortly after World War I, when canned foods took over.

There is nothing appetizing about hardtack, it is purely a carbohydrate delivery vehicle. Today biscuits come in hundreds of varieties that would make for fat, happy weevils. Wheat forms the essential base for the vast majority of them. Oats, meanwhile, offer a gluten free alternative.

Here are a few of my favourites separated into two categories:

Biscuits Better Bought Than Made

• Digestives – Wheat dominates the classic Digestive, or ‘sweet-meal’ biscuit, still one of the UK’s most popular almost 200 years since its introduction. The plain digestive is dry, slightly sweet and by modern standards a little bland. For Americans, think of a dense Graham cracker. Crushed digestives mixed with butter make a wonderful base for all sorts of fruity and/or creamy pies. I’ll skip the dubious claims about sodium bicarbonate aiding digestion and point out the great joy of this cookie is its ability to dissolve rapidly in a warm mug of tea. Naturally, you want to dunk it to offset its desiccating effect on your palate. Unless you want a layer of wheat sludge at the bottom of your ‘cuppa’, you learn at an early age to dunk it swiftly and in stages. Wait a fraction of a second too long or dip too much in and an entire section will break off and plop into your mug. Dip too quickly and you fail to warm and moisten the sweet-meal adequately. It is a skill, like understanding the rules of cricket and enjoying Marmite, that differentiates the British from foreigners.
• Hobnobs – Oats dominate this Digestive variant giving it more mouth feel and a little more sweetness and texture. Chocolate Hobnobs were declared the UK’s favourite biscuit in a 2014 survey. I should note that Digestives and Hobnobs are both Scottish inventions.
• Wafer cookies – Layers of thin crispy wafers with sweet plain or dark chocolate cream in between. Other fillings include hazelnut cream (Nutella), strawberry, vanilla, and lemon. Stick to chocolate. Variances in sweetness and synthetic flavourings make the alternatives indigestible. Wafers are made from butter, flour and lots of sugar and the fillings from sugar, more sugar and vegetable oil. Given the acre-feet of shelf space wafer cookies take up in European groceries, it is safe to say they are very popular with the Continentals.
• Oreos – This sandwich of dark chocolate biscuits clad to a white sugary frosting is an American classic. Sixty years ago, a Coke vs. Pepsi debate raged amongst kindergartners whether Hydrox or Oreos were the better biscuit. Hydrox (Sunshine Biscuits) invented the category, but in the end Oreo (Nabisco) had better branding and now dominates. As a kid I leaned towards Hydrox. My recollection is they weren’t as sweet as Oreos so I could eat more of them without feeling icky.

Biscuits Better Made than Bought

• Shortbread – Another dense, sweet, Scottish, wheat-based cookie whose primary differentiator is masses of butter. Fantastic when fresh, iffy when left too long in the tin.
• Oatmeal – Long business meetings require sustenance. Trays of empty calories and bad coffee help maintain attention at the cost of your waistline. In America, meeting cookies came in two varieties, peanut butter and oatmeal raisin. Peanut butter shouldn’t (with one exception) be allowed near a cookie recipe. Oatmeal raisin was my choice and besides, it seemed like a healthier alternative.
  As the 1990s ground on, meeting cookies increased in size as caterers vied for contracts. By the turn of the century, they had grown to the size of a salad plate. People broke off chunks rather than take a whole one. Crumbs littered the buffet table as though a kids birthday party had ended in a food fight.
  Baking your own oatmeal cookies is the way to go. Like a good soup, oatmeal batter can take in almost anything you have in your kitchen and, with enough brown sugar and butter, make it palatable. Start with the recipe on the box of oats you just bought, then mix it up. If you’re a square with a recipe, let oatmeal cookies be your introduction to baking jazz.
• Chocolate Chip – Industrial chocolate chip cookies never meet the standards of homemade Toll House cookies. You can find the recipe on a bag of Nestlé’s semi-sweet chocolate morsels. The cookie originated in 1938 at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. Ruth Wakefield, a trained dietician and chef, set out to create a new dessert. By adding chopped Nestlé’s chocolate to a butter cookie, she was onto a winner. As the cookie swept the nation during World War II, Nestlé arranged to reprint the recipe on its packages of chocolate, and later its semi-sweet morsels. Like oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies can withstand a lot of creative input. Nuts, dried fruits, alternate spices, and M&Ms have all been thrown into the mix. The classic recipe, however, has near universal appeal.
• Lauren’s – I mentioned an exception to my no peanut butter in cookies rule. The exception is our friend Lauren’s peanut butter miso cookies. While the original recipe may have come from the New York Times, Lauren is to biscuits what Charles Mingus is to the double bass. She is a jazz baker and riffs with all the unconscious competence of an impresario. Peanut butter miso is only one of scores of recipes that have inspired her. Like any jazz performance, the results are unique. Each version slightly different (and slightly better) than the one before. Should you miss a take, don’t panic. Lauren makes enough dough for dozens of cookies and stores them in her freezer. Just ask her nicely and she’ll bake a biscuit for you.

Science

People can be particularly opinionated on the topic of texture. Some prefer their biscuits crispy and crunchy, while others lean towards softer and chewier. Baking is chemistry and chemistry demands research and process discipline. With a bit of rigorous experimentation, anyone can make a bikkie that satisfies them. And remember, always make enough to share. Your friends and neighbours will thank you.

1. King Arthur Baking: The perfect chocolate chip cookie
2. Institute of Culinary Education: Cookie Science

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