Cookies was once a term only used in America for small flat-baked biscuits. However, the idea of cookies has now spread worldwide and tends to mean fat biscuits.

You may imagine that the word cookie has something to do with being cooked. However it does not. The word cookie comes from the Dutch word koekje which means little cake (the Dutch for cake is koek). These koekje were common across Europe by later Tudor times.

Cookies actually went from Europe to America, probably with the first settlers to Roanoke and Jamestown and almost certainly with the Pilgrims, as well as other early English settlers. However, it is the Dutch name that has stuck.