Jock, this may be like the old chips -crisps-fries problem, but Americans have a pastry cutter, too. In the US, a Pastry cutter is a tool used for blending pastry- if you need one and don't have it, you use a fork. Where Fluter and I come from, one punches cookies ( UK: Biscuits ) and biscuits (UK: scones? not really, rolls? Not that, either) out of dough using a circular cutter and then bakes them in the oven. If you need one and don't have it, almost anything will do- a glass, a soup can ( UK:tin ) any ring that can be pressed onto the surface of the rolled dough. And then, at Christmas or other times, you can use a more elaborately shaped device to cut out dozens of identical bears or stars or gingerbread men, or what have you- highland pipers, I suppose...

And now we need to know, if you made a dough from flour and baking soda and milk, rolled it out and cut discs from it, what would you call the baked discs in the UK? Hereabouts , we call them biscuits and eat them with jelly, or butter, or a slice of meat in them. How soft they are depends on how good a biscuit maker you are. I have seen them range from melt-in-your- mouth to hockey pucks.