My head filled with a crunch that sounded like bears eating potato chips as I bit down on the rock-hard pink biscuit. The flavor, a wisp of unsweetened Kool-Aid powder, didn’t help.
I considered using the remainder of the three-inch rectangle topped with powdered sugar to level the wobbly wine bar table. Sensing my befuddlement, a passing waiter blurted out for everyone to hear, “You’re supposed to dip them in your Champagne.”
I dutifully submerged the pink object into my bubbles. The biscuit’s tiny air pockets soaked up the Champagne to create a pink pillow filled with red berry flavors. Then it hit me. I exclaimed, “Come quickly; I am tasting Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries.”
Despite my inauspicious first taste of Maison Fossier’s Le Biscuit Rose de Reims, I am now hooked on the little pink biscuit that looks like it could double as a daybed in Barbie’s Dreamhouse.
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I’m admittedly late to the Fossier party, as this delightful Champagne dunker has been around since the early 1690s. The biscuit was such a hit at King Louis XVI’s coronation feast in 1775 that Fossier was immediately named an official baker to the crown. It is rumored that before King Louis XVI lost his head, he told the crowd, “I’m going to miss that biscuit.” The newly widowed Marie Antoinette enjoyed Fossier’s biscuits for another nine months.
How’d it get that bubble-gum hue though? The story goes that after finishing the bread for the day, a Reims baker wanted to use the still-warm ovens to make a special twice-baked treat that today we know as a biscuit. The sugary recipe included mashed vanilla pods, adding flecks to the off-white biscuit’s color. Wishing to camouflage the unsightly blemishes, the baker used a natural dye to turn the biscuit pink. The dye is called carmine, which consists of tiny bugs called cochineal beetles (which used to give Campari its red color) that are dried and crushed into a reddish powder. Carmine remains a part of the Fossier Biscuit recipe to this day.
But don’t let crushed bugs deter you from dipping Fossier’s Le Biscuit Rose de Reims in your Champagne. The only thing you will taste, besides the bubbles, is Crunch Berries and a dollop of powdered sugar sediment in the last little sip.
If it’s good enough for Marie Antoinette, it is good enough to let all the rest of us eat.
This article originally appeared in the 2023 Best of Year issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today!
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Published: December 13, 2023
