When Sam of Becks & Posh challenged food bloggers everywhere to consider why English food is not a joke, I knew I had to enter my feedback. My simple answer? English food is not a joke because nobody does biscuits (cookies) better. If you ever need to bribe me for any reason, just present me with a tube of chocolate-covered digestive biscuits and you can have whatever you want.
I recently needed to bribe someone who likes light, not-too-sweet cookies. Who, you ask? The who would be Otto, the manager of the parking structure in my office building; also known as the most powerful man in downtown Los Angeles. When there are thousands of office folk and only hundreds of parking spaces, and you're the one who decides who gets a parking pass and who doesn't, you've got power beyond any meathead bouncer at even the most "it" LA nightclubs. So I promised Otto I'd make him some fabulous, light cookies if he gave me a parking space. I like English biscuits in particular because they are never overly sweet but still decadently buttery and rich. The perfect match in this case? Shrewsbury biscuits.
Shrewsbury biscuits originate from an English town of the same name, and were made popular by a baker named Mr. Palin in 1819. Though his original version was very hard, later recipes resulted in softer, chewier cookies. In any case, Mr. Palin's biscuits were beloved by many, as illustrated by Elizabeth Anderton in her "A Little Shropshire Gift Book," published in 1978, which says:
"Mr Palin, prince of cake compounders, the mouth liquefies at thy very name! This fulsome praise, given in one of ‘The Ingoldsby Legends’, is for Mr Palin of Shrewsbury, renowned for his particular mix of Shrewsbury cake or biscuits."
The recipe is very simple: butter, egg yolks, sugar, flour and lemon rind. There are variations of this cookie that include cardamon and other spices, but I am a sucker for pure lemon flavor so I went with the basic version.
I improvised a bit and added some blood orange rind to the lemon rind as I only had a half of a lemon in my kitchen. I'm not sure if you can see it in this picture, but it produced little flecks of dark orange throughout the cookie, which added a nice decorative touch.
I packaged the cookies in an old Japanese tin I had, and will be giving them to Otto tomorrow; he's already promised me a pass - after my promise of cookies - and these Shrewsbury Biscuits will not disappoint. The cookies came out thin and chewy and lemony and light and utterly irresistable. Who knew English food could be all of those things and more? Just more evidence that English food is NOT a joke!
