Besides sipping our way through Épernay a girl needs to consume something solid from time to time.  Not wanting the waste kilojoules we found the Rose de Riems soft biscuit. It reminded me of a pink cake that Wilna, a friend of my mom’s, used to bake.

It is customary to dip the soft pink biscuit in champagne or red wine. Wikipedia states that the biscuit was born around the year of 1690 in Reims. A baker had wanted to make the most of the heat in the bread oven between the two batches. He had the idea of creating a special dough and of cooking it twice, which is where the name “biscuit” or “bis-cuit” originated – “cooked twice” in French. In order to hide brown vanilla traces the baker  decided to add a dark pink or cochineal to disguise mistakes. This is how Rose de Riems was concieved and my life has improved since my discovery of this delight.