Breaking news – today is National Biscuit Day and since Ross Good Neighbours began shopping for those isolated at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March, the hard working volunteer shopping team has been busy delivering thousands of biscuits to our snack loving community – around 6,500 sweet & savoury biscuits to be exact. This is in addition to an eye watering amount of baking products that our keen home-bakers have been busy purchasing, which proves just what a creative and resourceful community we are.

One flour mill in the Northumberland has seen a 500% increase in production during lockdown which explains why supermarkets have been left consistently empty of its most popular baking ingredient. It’s plain to see that Ross-on-Wye star bakers have also risen to the occasion and broken the mould by spending a fair bit of their dough on baking items to pass the time productively in isolation.

In addition to biscuit consumption, isolated Ross-on-Wye residents have been clearing the local supermarket shelves of 1,992 eggs, 131 kg of flour, 58 kg of butter and 64 kg of sugar – enough to make a pretty big cake. This would, in fact, rival the ingredients of a Dorset baker’s Victoria sponge, deemed the world’s largest cake in 2017 – it reached an incredible 5 ft in width and weighed in at 50 stone, using 700 eggs and 227 kg of flour, butter and sugar.

To arm you with some biscuit facts on this notable day:

• The word ‘biscuit’ is from the Middle French word biscuit, derived from the Latin words bis (twice) and coquere, coctus (to cook, cooked), and therefore means ‘twice-cooked’. This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process – first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven.
• Two packets of biscuits are consumed on average every minute in the UK
• British biscuit consumption is the highest in the world
• For the tea-dunkers, the UK’s favourite is the strong & sturdy chocolate bourbon
• The humble Jaffa Cake is the UK’s favourite biscuit-y treat – after some controversy, it was deemed that if a biscuit is covered in chocolate it becomes a luxury item, and the standard 20% VAT is applied – however this doesn’t apply to cakes, so while legally it is a cake, the people have spoken and have ruled that the Jaffa Cake is indeed a biscuit.

Finally – don’t forget – the Ross In Lockdown photo competition, launched this week, is looking forward to receiving entries in the ‘Baking’ category so whatever you’re baking today or over the weekend, please take a photo and upload to https://filerequestpro.com/up/RGN-Baking.

Biscuits, bakes, savoury, sweet, disasters and triumphs all welcome – have a cracking weekend!