Café @ Safari is a little shop where you can buy drinks, biltong, pate, tea’s and cookies. While packing our shelves the other day, I was wondering, WHERE DOES THE IDEA OF COOKIES COME FROM?
Our cookies we sell, are made with love, in a kitchen, not a factory. These cookies are made by ladies who take time in mixing and baking all these different types with patience. These ladies experiment with different flavours, like ginger (most popular), orange, peanut butter, chocolate chip, black forest, astro’s, oaties and crunchies. Its fresh and tasty and home baked
You can’t just go and buy from them. You must order and then they will start to bake your order.
So where did this idea come from, who baked the first cookie and why? The only place I could think of to start searching for an answer was our good friend google.
Cookies appeared in the 7th century AD in Persia (now Iran), shortly after the use of sugar became common in baking. The cookie became popular because they travel well, and because its dry, it can last for a long time. They spread to Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain.
By the 14th century the cookie was common in all levels of society throughout Europe, and were sold by street vendors. One of the most popular early cookies, which travelled specially well become known as the jumble, a hard cookie made largely from nuts.
The Renaissance cookbooks were rich in cookie recipes. In 1596 the cookbook called “Goode Huswife’s Jewel” by Thomas Dawson from Elizabethan, England were full of cookie recipes. The name “cookie” comes from the Dutch word “koekjes”. The British prefer to call cookies “small cakes”, or “tea cakes”.
The earliest reference to cookies in America is in 1703, the Dutch in New York provided 800 cookies for a funeral. Today cookies are enjoyed with tea, coffee or just like that, and there will be a cookie to everyone’s taste I am sure. Enjoy!!
