Patisserie has rarely been out of fashion, but lately it has felt like cake stands have never been piled higher. They groan with cupcakes swathed in clouds of buttercream and mouthful-sized cake pops almost too pretty to eat. There are piles of whoopie pies sandwiched with pillows of frosting; rainbows of fragile, pastel macarons.
So it's reassuring that among all ofthis fetishisation, a more humble teatime tradition still holds firm. Everyyear the average household crunches itsway through 103 packets of biscuits. They're what we open when friends drop in for a quick cup oftea, orwhen dinner seems an incredibly longway off. And everybody has theirfavourite.
"A bourbon cream! I love the way you can dunk them and the cream melts inside, or you can take the top layer off them and then eat them," says Becky Lyon, who is organising a new British biscuit festival at London's Brunswick Centre, which kicks off tomorrow. "There are so many social rituals around them."
To begin with, there was littleritual involved with biscuits. Made for sailors and soldiers from flour and water, biscuits were a practical way of preserving carbohydrates. "The original biscuit was adried bread product, arusk," says the food historian Ivan Day. "Later came the idea of aerating the flour and eggs to make asponge cake that was driedout, often in the oven – hence biscuit, which means twice-baked in French. Youended up with spongefingers."
In the 17th and 18th centuries, these sponge fingers were often handed round at the end of a meal to be dipped in sweet wine – in much the same manner as the Italian cantucci e vin santo: a dessert of sweet wine and almond bisuits. (Day has found an English recipe from 1789 for what is essentially a biscotti.) "Ifyou look at a trifle, with sponge fingers drinking in the booze from the bottom, it's a memory of what weonce used to do withbiscuits," says Day. "They've played a big part in the British diet for along time."
But it wasn't until the 19th century and the popular emergence of afternoon tea that Britain began to regard biscuits as something you dunked in your cuppa; a uniquely British idea that we were quick to export around the globe, and have been slow to give up – the frequency with which we buy biscuits has slightly grown in the last five years – despite pressures to reduce our ever-expanding waistlines.
And our tastes remain traditional, largely unswayed by new innovations. While cereal bars and "healthier" ranges are growing in popularity, it is the digestive – in its plain and chocolate-covered forms – that remains Britain's most popular choice. We consume 4.4m of them every day. "[The popular biscuits] have always been the same since we were kids," he says. "There are some new kids on the block – the biggest change in the biscuit market is the introduction of cereal bars – but fundamentally the biggest-selling biscuits are the traditional favourites."
It's not that Britain is entirely resistant to change: the deliciously oaty Hobnob, for example, first hit the shelves in the mid 80s and is now very much part of the biscuit establishment. But despite the massive variety on offer, we still reach for the digestives and rich tea when we're in the supermarket. "When we talk to our customers, we very quickly get into nostalgia," says Eggleton. "People get into a favourite biscuit very early in life and then stick with it."
Eggleton's favourites? Digestives and Jaffa Cakes. Despite the latter not actually being a biscuit at all. But then Britain has form when it comes to the "cake" moniker. "The very earliest example of what we'd call a biscuit is the shrewsbury cake, a shortbread flavoured with ginger and given a particular design on the top," explains Day.
At Bettys tearooms and bakery in Yorkshire it's also the classics that prove most popular, with the company's shortbread its strongest seller. Sowhat is it that makes us fall for certain biscuits? "I think it'ssomething to do with the different tastes and textures and how they work on peoples' palates," says Claire Gallagher, head of development at Bettys. "With shortbread, what makes it so special is the fantastic ingredients. There isn't a great deal in there, but it's about making sure we have the best." For summer that includes Yorkshire lavender, which turns a rich, delicious finger of shortbread into a perfumed, almost herbal treat. It's high on my list of new favourite biscuits. But nothing is going to displace the everyday joy of the digestive.
A controversial McVitie's recipe change that has reduced the saturated fat inits biscuits substantially has raised eyebrows, although Eggleton argues thatthis happened two years ago, making recent concentration on the change somewhat contrived. The complaints about it being more oily, or morebrittle, dohowever, illustrate one thing very clearly: for the British, biscuits matter.
