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From Cookie Gift Baskets
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Cookie gift baskets or bouquets are becoming very popular with many busy cookie lovers and enthusiasts. Besides, their small shapes and sizes make cookies one of many convenient baked products for packaging and mailing.
Packaging homemade cookies is simple and easy with proper technique. Nowadays, you and I can also conveniently order cookie gift baskets or cookie bouquets that come in many beautiful designs and arrangements.
Cookies were first packaged in America around 1830 in plain tin containers. Since then, names like Fig Newton, Oreo, Toll House, Barnum’s Animal Crackers are common in many Americans’ households.
Back in the Wild West days, a cookie was another name for the cook or the cook's helper.
Cookie was initially spelled cookey. The Scotch first used this word to refer to their soft and chewy small cakes. In 1796, Amelia Simmons of Hartford, Connecticut introduced cookey to America as she presented a Christmas cookey recipe in her cookbook.
As new ingredients, mixing techniques, heating sources became available during the Middle Ages, more and more delicate and irresistible cookies emerged.
Aeration through whipping egg whites made creation of French macaroons and meringues possible. The addition of fats and sugar made cookies more tender and flavorful. Many creators of today cookie gift baskets would likely favor these types of cookies for their long shelf-life.
Cookie or cookey was originated from the Dutch word koekje. Before the Middle Ages when Dutch children gathered and played around their mothers and grandmothers, they would often receive special treats of tiny pieces of cooked dough called koekje. Women at that time used these tiny pieces of dough to test the heat of their ovens. Since then, we now know significantly more about the science of baking.
Cookies have been known as biscuits in England since before the Middle Ages. Sailors or solders had to feed on brick-hard, oven-baked pieces of tough dough that they nicknamed hardtack or stone bread.
Bis means twice in French, and cuit is cooked. That literal translation no longer applies to cookies as we know and love today. Unlike our ancestors of pre Middle Ages, we now have the best baking ingredients, easy recipes, modern tools to help us turn out the best possible homemade cookies.
Whenever we are not in the mood for baking, there are always cookie gift baskets or bouquets that we could order online or by mail. Although they come in many varieties, not all cookies are suitable for long distant transport.
As we go along, I will identify varieties of cookies that ship well and even taste better with a little aging and refrigeration.
