The biscuit that’s made for dunkin’ – and is perfect pre-breakfast
Each week we celebrate the love of a good snack, with genius ideas for eating for pure pleasure – either solo or with friends…
AS A FOOD professional, one of my key areas of interest is the space in which baked goods and breakfast intersect. Sure, there’s the croissant, the chocolate chip brioche, the cinnamon bun, hell – the glazed doughnut! But I’m drawn to the baked goods that weren’t purpose-built for breakfast time. I’m interested in my friend’s family tradition that involves her mum baking a Madeira cake on Christmas Eve so that everyone can have a slice with their tea when they wake up on Boxing Day with a freshly stretched stomach. I’m encouraging you to get into the infinitely adaptable breakfast cake in my first cookbook, Carbs. I’m imploring you to fry your banana bread in butter. And I’m asking you to consider the biscuit.
Last year, I took a trip to Sicily, my first with a baby. Each morning it took us longer to get out of our Airbnb, so we kept a stash of almond biscuits and coffee on site as a morning snack – a precursor to the main breakfast granita. There were pasticcini di mandorle – soft, dense, chewy, marzipany, fantastically sweet beauties. But there was also boring old biscotti, the hard biscuits of the ’90s and of afterthoughts.
I found myself preferring the latter. Biscotti are transformed when dipped, making them a true coffee-drinker’s snack. You need loads, not just one perched on the side of a saucer, and you need chocolate to melt transiently between your cup and your mouth. Start your day snacking the hard old biscuit way – you won’t regret it.