· 5 min read
Traditional Cookies and Biscuits
Biscuits are the only thing we make that improves from being ignored for a day, which makes them the most useful thing to have in the house.
Almost everything we bake is racing a clock. Cream softens meringue, custard softens pastry, fruit gives up its juice. Biscuits are the exception. They are the only part of the range that will sit patiently in a tin for a week and be as good at the end of it as at the beginning, and several are better on day two than on day one.
That makes them the most practical thing we make, and the least appreciated.
Kurabye
200 g for £15, which makes it the cheapest thing on the site.
Kurabye is piped through a star nozzle into a rosette with a well in the centre, and a spot of strawberry jam goes into the well before baking. It turns up under related names across Turkey, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and it is one of the oldest things in the Eastern European repertoire.
The dough is almost entirely butter, so the texture is crumbly to the point of collapse, and it is barely sweet on its own. The jam does all the sweetening, which is why there is only a spot of it.
It keeps for a week or more in a tin without losing anything, and it is the thing we would suggest adding to an order to get over the £50 minimum, because it is cheap, it is good, and it will still be there next Thursday.
Goose feet
Gusinye lapki. 300 g, roughly twenty cookies, for £25.
The dough is tvorog and butter with almost no sugar in it. The sweetness is applied from the outside instead. Each round is dipped in sugar, folded, dipped again, folded again, which gives the layered triangular shape the name refers to.
In the oven the sugar on the outside caramelises and turns crisp while the inside stays short and crumbly. That contrast between a crisp sugared shell and an unsweetened interior is the entire cookie, and it is why the folding is done in this fussy way instead of simply putting sugar in the dough.
They keep for a week in an airtight tin and they are one of the few things we make that is arguably better on the second day, once the sugar shell has fully set.
Peanut rings
Twelve for £36.
Shortcrust rings brushed and rolled in roasted peanuts so the whole outside is covered rather than sprinkled.
The biscuit underneath is buttery and only just sweet, which it has to be, because roasted peanuts bring their own richness and a sweeter base would tip the whole thing over. Toasting the nuts properly is what separates these from a plain nut cookie, and untoasted peanuts make a dull, slightly raw tasting biscuit.
These are a tea biscuit rather than a dessert, and they are the sort of thing that disappears from a kitchen counter over several days with nobody admitting responsibility.
Oat cookies
£20, and the everyday option.
Rolled oats, cinnamon and honey, baked so the middle stays chewy and the edge crisps. Honey rather than only sugar is what keeps them soft for days instead of going hard overnight, and it carries the cinnamon better than sugar does.
They are among the least sweet things we make, which is deliberate. An oat cookie that tastes like a chocolate biscuit has missed the point of being an oat cookie.
Good with tea, good in a lunchbox, and they hold for most of a week in a tin.
Florentines
Six pieces, 200 g, for £23.
More caramel and nut than biscuit. Almonds, sesame seeds and cranberries are bound in caramel, baked thin until the caramel sets to a snap, then finished with dark chocolate underneath.
Getting them thin enough is the difficult part. Too thick and they turn chewy rather than brittle, and the whole appeal is that they shatter. The sesame is what makes ours different from most, and it brings a savoury edge that stops the caramel becoming sickly.
They keep well in a tin and they travel better than anything soft, which makes them the right thing to take somewhere or to put in a hamper. They are also flour free, which is occasionally useful.
Cookies selection
Four boxes at £18 each, and you choose the flavour at checkout. Chocolate, marshmallow, raspberry and pistachio, or popcorn and caramel.
These are large soft cookies rather than crisp biscuits, soft in the middle and crisp at the edge, and they are a different proposition from everything above. They are best within two or three days rather than a week.
The raspberry and pistachio is the one to order if you want something that looks like it came from a patisserie. The popcorn and caramel is the outlier and the one that most surprises people.
For an office or a party, two or three boxes across different flavours goes considerably further than the same number of boxes of one flavour.
Chocolate things
Orange truffles, £48 for twenty. Dark chocolate ganache with orange worked into it rather than added on top. They keep for a couple of weeks in a cool place, longer than anything else we make.
Chocolate selection, £15 for ten, in pistachio, raspberry and ginger, or cranberry, raisin and walnut.
Kartoshka, £24 for six. Not a biscuit, but it belongs in this section because it keeps for several days in the fridge. Cake crumb, butter, cocoa and condensed milk, rolled and dusted to look like small potatoes.
What to put in a tin
If you want a tin that lasts a week and covers most moods, the answer is kurabye at £15, goose feet at £25 and Florentines at £23.
That is £63, it clears the minimum order on its own, and between the three you have something crumbly and buttery, something crisp and sugared, and something brittle with chocolate on it. All three will still be worth eating next Friday, which is not something we can say about anything else we make.
Everything needs 48 hours notice. Delivery is £12 within SW3 and £15 across the rest of London and Surrey.
Order it for the date you need
Everything here is baked to order for your date.
48 hours notice, 72 for bread. Delivered across London and Surrey.