Biscuit recipe of the week: Threadneedle Street biscuits

In case you need biscuit-baking inspiration, we’ve been digging in our library and  archives for examples of biscuit recipes you might not have come across before. Our Librarian has managed to find several interesting recipes in the rare books collection, such as Lemon biscuits and Drop biscuits from  ‘The London Art of Cookery’ by John […]

Biscuit recipe of the week: Littlehampton Honey & Fig Biscuits

The second biscuit recipe of this week, by Alison Hilton, MERL Marketing Officer Sometimes I really love social media! We’d never have come across this week’s recipes had it not been for a #ThrowbackThursday image we posted last week on Twitter.  As it was #BritishSandwichWeek, the picture was of recipes for sandwich spreads from a […]

Biscuit recipe of the week: 1940s jam biscuits

By Shira Kilgallon, UoR History Student and MERL Library Volunteer This week’s biscuit recipe comes from Ministry of Food pamphlets found in the MERL Library collections; two pamphlets have been used to give you a recipe with a twist (and a bit of a challenge!!). This particular twist is definitely for the more experimental among […]

Biscuit recipe of the week: Picnic Café's famous macaroons

by Alison Hilton, Marketing Officer and biscuit sampler. Fans of Picnic Café in Reading will share my excitement about this week’s recipe, which owner, Jon Amery has kindly agreed to share. Picnic is supplying the cake for the tea tent at the MERL Village Fete again this year, and Jon will be a judge on the […]

Biscuit recipe of the week: Chocolate chip cookies

Another recipe to practise for the Biscuit Bake-off, written by Alison Hilton At the recent launch of the Biscuit Bake-off competition, Andrew Palmer’s wife, Davina, very kindly presented MERL staff with a signed copy of her book ‘Kitchen Diplomacy: 30 years of Foreign Service Cooking’. I was amazed to discover, on reading the introduction, that […]

Discovering the Landscape #5: Mawson’s ‘The art & craft of garden making’ (1900)

Written by Claire Wooldridge, Graduate Trainee Library Assistant As progress continues to integrate the library and archive of the Landscape Institute into our MERL collections, here’s a brief look at another of our favourite items: The art & craft of garden making by Thomas H. Mawson (London: B.T. Batsford, 1900) In his first book, Mawson […]

Biscuit recipe of the week: Anzac biscuits

Since the recent launch of our Village Fete Biscuit Bake-off , we have started publishing a biscuit recipe each week to inspire you to practise baking biscuits and to enter the competition at the Fete on May. Our Librarians and archivists are digging out some interesting recipes from the MERL collections, and we’d also welcome […]

Picture of the month #9: Lambs

After watching ‘Lambing Live’, seeing lambs in fields on my way to work and  cute pictures of lambs from @herdyuk, @farmersoftheuk and many more, every time I log on to Twitter, lambs seemed to be the obvious seasonal subject matter for our Picture of the Month post this time. One picture from our collections immediately […]

Biscuit recipe of the week: Rich Traveller biscuits

Welcome to our series of biscuit recipes to inspire you to take part in the Biscuit Bake-off at the MERL Village Fete on May 31st! At the recent launch of the Biscuit Bake-off, University student Deiniol Pritchard experimented with a Huntley & Palmers recipe for ‘University Rusks’, which everyone at the special Todder Time event […]

Discovering the Landscape #4: Inaugural Meeting of the LI Friends Group

Guest post written by Penny Beckett, Chair of the LI Archive Friend’s Group As followers of this blog will be aware, the Landscape Institute transferred its archive to MERL in October of last year and is currently supporting MERL financially to work on the Institute’s collections and make them accessible. As part of the terms […]


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