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"Cooking, in effect, took part of the work of chewing and digestion and performed it for us outside of the body, using outside sources of energy. Also, since cooking detoxifies many potential sources of food, the new technology cracked open a treasure trove of calories unavailable to other animals. Freed from the necessity of spending our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture."

Michael Pollan

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Entries in biscuit (2)

Sunday
Dec202020

Edmonds Ginger Crunch

This was one of my favourite biscuits growing up. It is one of 3 that I made on rotation from the cookbook, Edmonds, a staple of any NZ family kitchen. The other two, in case you’re interested, were Afghans and Anzacs. While I still make Afghans regularly and Anzacs at least once a year for Anzac Day, these had fallen off my radar. I decided to revisit Ginger Crunch recently as I thought they’d make a nice festive gift for family and friends. 

The recipe below is has more ginger in it than the original. I remembered adding plenty more ground ginger as a kid and now I am going a step further and adding fresh ginger too. I think it is safe to assume that if you are making ginger biscuits, then you love ginger. I’ve also added an instruction to use salted butter and added some Maldon sea salt flakes to the icing, because who doesn’t like salted caramel? 

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Wednesday
Apr302014

Edmonds Afghans

Yes, Afghans. New Zealand’s favourite, casually racist biscuits. I loved these biscuits as a kid and it never occurred to me that there was something inappropriate about their name until I made them for someone who had not grown up with a well-thumbed copy of Edmonds Cookery Book on their kitchen bookshelf.

We can perhaps excuse their name if we consider them as a product of their time. Edmonds Cookery Book was first published in 1908 and the recipe for Afghans is thought to have been in there at least since the 1940s. In a post called ‘Decolonising the Chocolate Biscuit’, one NZ food blogger (no name to be found) suggests that the problem is not with those who named the biscuit, but with the connotations it carries today. She/he suggests decolonising the biscuit by renaming it ‘Decolonisation Walnut Surprise’, among other suggestions.

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