Pink biscuit from Reims: a festive treat to enjoy with Champagne.
Our sweet cravings lead us to Reims, the capital of Champagne but not only…
To accompany this festive wine, the people of Champagne offer a specialty that we all know: the pink biscuit.
The pink biscuit from Reims, the only biscuit authorized to be dipped in Champagne.
Did you know that the future kings of France, crowned at Reims Cathedral, were welcomed with baskets of biscuits, including the pink biscuit?
The first writings mentioning this delicacy date back to 1690. Like many desserts, the little pink rectangle was invented by chance.
At that time, bakers did not know what to do with the residual heat from the ovens after baking the loaves. So they made a mixture of sugar, eggs and flour which they forgot in the oven. Finding the cookie a little bland, they then had the idea of adding vanilla. But the black grains were not aesthetically pleasing, so they incorporated a red dye into the preparation: carmine.
Heir to the recipe of these bakers, Maison Fossier has made this biscuit its specialty, which is now part of the gourmet heritage of Champagne-Ardenne.
Proof of this is that the Reims biscuit made its debut in the Petit Larousse, 2018 edition. Its definition is this: “A small, dry, rectangular cake, tinged with carmine, flavored with vanilla and sprinkled with icing sugar”. The painter Paul Cézanne also contributed to his notoriety by painting five still lifes in which we see the small rectangular cookie.
And if the pink biscuit from Reims is used in a number of desserts (charlotte, tiramisu etc.), it remains above all a festive flavor for us.
Family tradition obliges, which of us has never dipped it in our glass of Champagne?
