Sweet Biscuits

Sweet biscuits are the simplest biscuits on the shelf: flour, sugar, fat and a little milk, baked until crisp and dry. In India the glucose biscuit is so common that it is often a child's first biscuit, and the round, thin marie is the one served with tea in offices and waiting rooms. Sri Lankan bakeries make their own marie and a coconut biscuit with a toasty, sweet flavour, while digestives and nice biscuits are the British cousins found in the same cupboards.

Each style suits a different moment. Glucose biscuits are soft and milky, and break up quickly in tea, so they are good for children. Marie biscuits are lighter and less sweet, which is why they are also crushed into the base of a biscuit pudding or the Sri Lankan biscuit cake layered with butter icing and coffee. Digestives are wholemeal and crumbly, and coconut biscuits hold their crunch even after a quick dunk. Elaichi and jeera biscuits add cardamom or cumin for a more Indian flavour.

Sweet biscuits keep well, but they still pick up moisture once opened. Store them in a tin with a tight lid and away from the stove. Crushed marie or digestive also makes a quick crumble topping for kheer or custard. The full shelf is under biscuits and cookies, with filled ones in cream biscuits and harder twice baked ones in rusks. Pair them with tea bags or a pot of loose leaf.