Shrewsbury cakes

Although the name could fool you into thinking that these are cakes, a Shrewsbury cake is a brittle, spiced biscuit that looks a bit like a gingerbread biscuit. It is thanks to playwright William Congreve that we know that they are brittle, short biscuits. In his play The Way of the World from 1700, he wrote, ‘You may be as short as a Shrewsbury cake.’ Shrewsbury cakes appeared as early as the 16th century and, from 1760, Mr Pailin so