The British Biscuit Tin

From my blog

Germans love baking their own cakes and biscuits. My favourites are spicy Lebkuchen and Plätzchen. Best served piping hot with lemon grass tea. Brits love biscuits too, of course, but we would never dream of baking them ourselves.

We’re not lazy, we just love the tins too much.

When visitors come we serve biscuits “fresh” out of the tin, with all the ceremony of a royal wedding. We joyfully lay the cookies on a silver platter, passing it round to responses of “oh how nice” and “ooh, I’d love one with a jam heart!”

We’re not being ironic. We’re genuinely happy. And even happier when all the biscuits are gone and the tin can be used for everything that doesn’t fit into the top kitchen drawer: Sewing stuff, safety pins, throat lozenges and curled-up elastoplast “strips”. Lidl loyalty cards, faded photos and scratch cards too.

Everything, actually. Except more biscuits.