THE MOON IS A BISCUIT

I just read a fascinating piece on how the Moon might have formed in two distinct phases - one, where the volatile elements were crunched into a ball as it was flung round a fiery proto-Earth, and two, where all the other stuff steadily accreted to its surface.

This means that the Moon is technically a biscuit - a bis-cuit (twice cooked).

I made biscuits the other day. I put cinnamon and ginger in, and a plethora of raisins. I have to ration them so that the Intrepids don't eat them while I'm at work.

Originally of course, you would bake a biscuit twice - you'd cook it and then you'd dry it out in a second oven. Famously, this is how you define a biscuit - it gets harder as it cools, whereas a cake gets softer.

I just let mine cool on a rack and then sprinkled them with icing sugar. Then I hid them away in a tin.

Having read that article, I wondered how much fun it would be to think up a way of making Moon Biscuits. I don't just mean cutting them into waning crescents - I mean something that makes them look like the actual Moon. How cool would that be? I wonder whether it can be done.

What with the news that the word 'pyramid' originally referred to a type of cake, it occurred to me that there might be all sorts of cool things you could make out of cakes and biscuits. How do you make a pyramid-shaped cake? That'd be amazing!

Of course, I find it hard to look up at the Moon and imagine its fiery, volatile past. These days it's almost the epitome of serenity, silently hanging like a paper lantern in the deepening sky.

It reminds me that even those of us with difficult histories can settle into unbelievable peace, given time to cool and settle. And somewhere there's a Master Baker who knew what he was doing right from the beginning of the recipe.

I could really do with one of those biscuits. I hope the Intrepids haven't found the tin.