Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Anti-biscuits

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This idea is for biscuits (US: cookies) which are not circular, but are the strange shape made between 4 circles which have their centres on the corners of a square and which are touching (i.e. their radii are half the length of the square's sides) - see link. Then, if packaged in packets this shape, they improve packing efficiency, by filling in the spaces between 'normal' packets of biscuits in the boxes, and improve the packing efficiency of your cupboards at home by filling in the spaces between all the other (cylindrical) jars and packets.

They also could improve manfacturing efficiencies as well, by allowing the bits between the biscuits when they are stamped out of the sheet of dough to be made into biscuits rather than reprocessed or thrown away.

Of course, they are good for people on a diet as they are (pi/4) as big as 'normal' biscuits. Finally, the pointy corners of these biscuits allow for greater biscuit area submersion when dunking one in your tea.
hippo, Jun 25 2007

Basically, the biscuits would be the shape of the bits between the circles in this grid http://i.stack.imgur.com/TOrG1.png
(It took me a long time to find a picture which showed what I meant...) [hippo, Jun 25 2007, last modified Feb 15 2021]

anti-biscuit in 3d http://imgur.com/a/F7JBN
[xaviergisz, Jun 25 2007, last modified Dec 13 2011]

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       that is so strange. Literally yesterday I came up with the 3d equivalent of your anti-biscuit. It was in a completely different context - I was thinking it would make an excellent sculpture (each element would be suspended by nylon wire). (see illustration)
xaviergisz, Jun 25 2007
  

       They're tiny [-]   

       They allow you to lose 100(1-pi/4)% of biscuit-related weight. [+]   

       Pointy dough-tips will burn when baking [-]   

       They're called Anti-biscuits [+]
wagster, Jun 25 2007
  

       //Pointy dough-tips will burn when baking [-]// Not if the entire biscuit base were baked as a whole and then enbiscuitized post-baking. You might even be able to press the shapes required at the beginning, internal stresses caused by baking might finally separate each (anti)biscuit from its crumbly bretheren.
zen_tom, Jun 25 2007
  

       Since a biscuit is a small flat cake that is usually dry and sweet, wouldn't an anti-biscuit be a large round dough that was damp and sour?
nuclear hobo, Jun 25 2007
  

       I don't think the ratio is pi/4. Consider a biscuit or radius R. Imagine this as being cut out of a square, of side 2R. Your antibiscuit has the same area as the sum of the four left-over "corners". In this case (and using an asterisk to indicate "squared")   

       Area of square = 4r* Area of biscuit = pi.r* Area of antibiscuit=4r*-pi.r*   

       Ratio of antibiscuit to biscuit areas =   

       [4r*-pi.r*]/[pi.r*] =[4-pi]/pi =0.27   

       ie, the antibiscuit is only about a quarter the area of the biscuit, rather than pi/4 (or about 0.8).
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 25 2007
  

       Those things would just crumble; the pointy parts would fall right off.
phundug, Jun 25 2007
  

       Tiucsib.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 25 2007
  

       p!scn!f - or maybe it should be f!n>s!q
zen_tom, Jun 25 2007
  

       Take the tips, which would burn ([wagster]) and/or fall off ([phundug]), and include them in the actual biscuits as lumpy confusing areas, then leave them out of the tiu>sid design altogether. (They should still tessellate.)
Ketchupybread, Jun 25 2007
  

       [xaviergisz] Nice - you could make a mobile from those.
[MB] Oops yes, you're right - my maths was faulty.
[IanT] Yes, I contemplated calling them "negative biscuits", but the marketing guys thought that the word 'negative' sounded a bit negative.
hippo, Jun 25 2007
  

       the names sounds kinda cool like exploding biscuits. like anti-matter is matter exploding or basicly reversing itself. you could make reversable cookies.
abhorsen1983, Jun 25 2007
  

       That's the kind of thing - sounds much better, doesn't it?
hippo, Jun 26 2007
  

       These are essentially mini biscuits for ninjas.   

       When you've got the munchies,
And the shogun's nearby for sure,
Take out your Ninja-Crunchies,
And ninja, you can kill or cure!
  

       The ninja would totally flip out and kill the shogun first of course, but then he can pluck the biscuits out of the shogun's eyes and eat them on the fly home.
theleopard, Jun 26 2007
  

       Nice work [theleopard]. Or, to the tune of "Kung-fu Fighting":

Everybody's eating Ninja-Crunchies
Those snacks are sweet and munchy
In fact they are a little bit yummy
So go and buy some Ninja-Crunchies
hippo, Jun 26 2007
  

       Which brings up a very serious point: do anti-biscuits need a containment field?
nuclear hobo, Jun 27 2007
  

       Not if they're stored in depleted dilithium.
wagster, Jun 27 2007
  

       i think shortbread might be able to hold together well enough for this [+]
lilsis, Jun 27 2007
  

       You make somewhat of a point in improving the efficiency of packaging, but in terms of improving production efficiency, I'm willing to bet that most mass-produced cookies are extruded, not stamped. A cookie company that has been throwing away 1/2 of its dough is indeed in need of a reassessment of its business plan.
Diatonic, Jul 16 2009
  

       // Since a biscuit is a small flat cake that is usually dry and sweet, wouldn't an anti-biscuit be a large round dough that was damp and sour? //   

       A nice spherical bit of injera, instead of the usual flat ones.
ryokan, Jul 16 2009
  

       What's the opposite to sweet? I'd say it was bitter, not sour. To me, sour and sweet are similar, and actually, the four are all similar except salt. If you add in umami, spicy, astringent and bland, what have you got then? Astringent is the opposite to sweet, which explains why biscuits are dipped in tea. Which gives me the idea of biscuits which explode immediately when they come into contact with tea.
nineteenthly, Jul 16 2009
  


 

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