Get your greens — in a biscuit

GETTING more veg into our diets is a challenge for most of us — and you wouldn’t think cheese biscuits would help.

But a new range of hand-made crackers soon to go on sale in Waitrose contains an astonishingly high percentage of veg.

Cradoc’s golden Baked Vegetable Crackers come in three flavours: Beetroot & garlic, made with 37 per cent beetroot; spinach & Celery seed, with 17 per cent spinach; and Chilli, garlic & ginger, made with 7 per cent garlic.

The lady behind the range is Welsh potter allie Thomas, 57, who started making savoury biscuits five years ago at her house in Brecon, mid-Wales, after her ceramics business was hit by a bad debt.

allie, who has always cooked for people but insists she’s a cook, not a chef, says: ‘Let’s be honest: most cheese crackers are just boring, aren’t they? We wanted to make biscuits that were interesting, with delicious flavours, and that were good for you, too.

‘We also wanted them to go with everything — not just cheese, but charcuterie, pate, salmon or salsa.’

allie was determined not to use artificial flavourings, so she decided the flavour would come from the vegetables themselves — hence the unusually high proportions in the crackers.

she says she and her daughter Ella, 26, who runs Cradoc’s with her, spent years ‘ mulling, chopping and grinding’ fresh veg to work out how best to get the maximum amount into their crackers.

Thanks to all that veg, the crackers are vividly coloured in shades of red, green and orange. allie also has a range of cocktail biscuits, including a Leek & Caerphilly Cheese variety which are 27 per cent fresh leeks.

Cradoc’s Vegetable Crackers and the Leek & Caerphilly Cheese Cocktail Biscuits are available at Harvey nichols in London, Bristol, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Dublin and Edinburgh, as well as a wide range of delis and Welsh Waitroses, and will go into Waitrose and Ocado at the beginning of next month. They come in an 80g box containing 20- 24 crackers, RRP £2.19.

EASTER weekend has left my ears ringing with my children’s pleas for a puppy. We can’t get a dog yet, so I’m going to asda to buy them off with a sweet little cake. Pablo the Pug is a light sponge, sandwiched with buttercream and raspberry jam. He costs £ 10 and serves eight people.