Dr Ella Hawkins

Elizabethan playhouses were supplied by a network of tailors, merchants & craftswomen. Their names survive in records, but little is known about their lives. I’m working on new research that brings the stories of these makers & traders centre stage. Here is the project in biscuit (cookie) form. 🍪

Together with historian Dr Anouska Lester, I’m trawling through documents like the ones biscuified here to show how integral tradespeople were to the early modern theatre industry. The project is titled ‘Shakespeare’s Makers’. Stay tuned for our findings!

Biscuit flavour: Almond & rose (inspired by marchpane, a historical form of marzipan). Designs painted onto royal icing by hand using food colouring gels and vodka. This research is supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Programme (@britishacademy.bsky.social).

Some mudlarking finds survived for centuries in the muddy banks of the River Thames. Others are freshly baked tasty snacks. 🍪 This biscuit (cookie) set recreates ten of the 350+ mudlarked objects in London Museum's Secrets of the Thames exhibition. The exhibition closes on 1 March. Don’t miss it!

Finally, here’s a tiny sherd of Roman Samian pottery that seems to depict a somewhat X-rated scene:

londonmuseum.org.ukSecrets of the Thames

Biscuit flavour: sea salt and brown butter All biscuits decorated by hand using royal icing food colouring gels, edible lustres, and vodka. You can find out more about the Secrets of the Thames exhibition here: www.londonmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/sec...

This tiny treat replicates a gorgeous post-medieval button.

A big old sherd of 17th-century delftware:

Here are some of my favourite biscuified finds in more detail. First, this Early Bronze Age flint arrowhead (knapped from royal icing):

I can’t resist the stern face of this guy, who stars on a green glass bottle seal dating from c.1700-1900.

15 Aug 2025

William De Morgan was the Arts & Crafts movement’s most brilliant and prolific ceramic artist. This biscuit (cookie) set is inspired by some of his many tile designs. 🍪

15 Aug 2025

The designs biscuified above can all be found in the William De Morgan Tile Library at Wightwick Manor ‪(@nationaltrust.org.uk & @demorganfoundation.bsky.social‬). Biscuit flavour: orange, cardamom & vanilla. All biscuits painted, piped, and glazed by hand.

Today is National Biscuit Day, and it’s about time that I populated this account with biscuit (cookie) sets from the past few years. Here are some of my favourites. 🧵 First up, a set inspired by the delicious designs of William Morris and John Henry Dearle.

I’ll end with some dazzlingly glorious costume design. This summery set pays homage to Alexandra Byrne’s work on the 2020 film adaptation of ‘Emma’.

I’m currently on maternity leave. Biscuit-making opportunities are proving hard to come by, but I should have a couple of new sets to share soon. If you’d like to see more in the meantime: - ellahawkins.com - Instagram – @ellamchawk - Facebook – Ella Makes Cakes Happy National Biscuit Day 2025! 🍪

Have you ever had the urge to eat a Roman mosaic? This one (the real one, not the biscuit) was found in London by MOLA archaeologists, and dates from the late 2nd to 3rd century CE.

Almost done! I couldn’t leave out this edible assortment of medieval tiles from the British Museum. The biscuit recipe was inspired by flavours from the same period: honey, ginger, and clove.

One more bookish set for good measure. These biscuits are inspired by the weird and wonderful world of medieval illustration.

Things are about to get a bit ancient. I baked these biscuity sherds on a hemisphere cake tin in an attempt to recreate Ancient Greek pottery fragments in all three dimensions. The originals, dating from c.1600-435 BCE, can be found in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum.

Let’s do a bit of literary history next. This set is inspired by early modern books in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Folger Shakespeare Library collections. Shakespeare’s First Folio makes three biscuity appearances here. Honourable mentions also to Milton and to Beaumont and Fletcher.

I always wondered how the gold detailing on book bindings gets added. One day, I happened upon a photo of all the different book binding tools in the University of Reading's Special Collections conservation workshop. Here are some of them in biscuit form.

Most of my biscuits get eaten, but I hung on to this one. The flavour is orange, cardamom, and vanilla, and the design was painted by hand onto royal icing using food colouring gels and vodka.

Delftware tiles! There were hundreds of fabulous examples to choose from in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s online catalogue, but I eventually settled on nine. These 18th-century ships, shepherds, castles, figures, and flowers brought me joy. I hope they’ll do the same for you, too.

From Arts & Crafts patterns to medieval archaeology. These biscuits recreate stained glass fragments found a few years ago in the triforium of Westminster Abbey.

20 Dec 2024

’Tis the season for a biscuit set inspired by Victorian scrapbooking. 🍪 These festive scraps come from two scrapbooks in the Powerhouse Collection, both thought to have been compiled by children between 1880 and 1890.

20 Dec 2024

All designs painted onto royal icing by hand using food colouring gels and vodka. The biscuit (cookie) flavour is based on a Victorian recipe for fig pudding. Ingredients include fig, candied peel, almond & sherry.

5 Dec 2024

Centuries ago, many astronomical books included moving parts to help readers interpret the world around them. This biscuit recreates a diagram from Sacrobosco’s ‘De Sphaera’ (c.1550). It could be used to calculate the changing length of daylight hours through the year. 🍪