Fox's Butter Tea
Tuesday 5 Nov 2002
	Just recently we have had an awful lot of Rich Tea to get through. A nice man from Burton's foods wanted our opinion on some of their Rich Tea, and those which they make for various supermarket chains. The whole exercise was very informative and we feel we have a much better grasp of the genre having eaten our way through seven packets. Suffice to say we are all Rich Tea'd out. So it was with some trepidation that I dipped into our Fox's review box and pulled out a pack of their Butter Tea biscuits. And it was with a certain amount of delight that I found they were nothing like Rich Tea. In fact they are nearer to an all butter biscuit that has been crossed with a slightly corse shortbread, featuring as they do 11.2 % butter content. Altogether a nice session biscuit, with several being seen off in short succession, and this is not entirely due just to their taste as we shall see. All was not completely rosy in the garden. The first sign of trouble was the small plastic tray slipped inside the pack and holding the biscuits in one continuous stack. Such devices are there to protect frail and easily damaged biscuits and indeed many of the pack contents were split in two. This can make it difficult to judge your biscuit intake as polishing off half biscuits seems more like an act of compassion putting the poor demi biccies out of their misery. One soon looses count, in the rush to bring order and wholeness to the biscuits. And this is where the second problem arises, Butter Teas appear to stick to one another, and when you try to unstick them they break in two, and off you go again trying to eat all the broken ones. So before you open a pack of Butter Tea be prepared for it all getting away from you, one way or another.

Marie
Tuesday 29 Oct 2002
	This week we have picked on one those dull bland biscuits again. The Marie biscuit really isn't much to get worked up about, in fact I'm struggling to think of anything to say about it really. Its like a fluffy rich tea with a hint of vanilla. There. Oh and it has some quite intricate patterns and writing. Why then does half the world seem to have an interest in this un-remarkable little disc of whatever? India, Austraila,South Africa and many other countries think of the Marie biscuit as part of their cuisine. Indeed the review biscuits were made in the Netherlands, and imported by Sainsbury's. How has this biscuit secured a position of global importance? No that wasn't a rhetorical question, I really don't know. But wait what's this! They are all doing wonky recipes with them, smashing them up or covering them in random stuff, well they would have to really because they taste pretty lousy. I don't know, I prefer to think of them in terms of a biscuit version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, up there with the Rich Tea, Morning Coffee and the Lemon Puff. The Lemon puff would be the really dodgy one on the far right, and the Marie biscuit would have a big sword and start all the fights. Yep I'm wandering now.  Your feedback 8 messages

Fox's Rocky Chocomania Limited Edition
Sunday 20 Oct 2002
	This week we have dipped into our Fox's review box again to give you another chance to find out about some of the leading edge biscuit engineering being done by our friends at Fox's. As we saw with the sprinkle crinkle crunch, Fox's will happily push the envelope of biscuit design, and the Rocky Chocomania is an exercise in extreme chocolate usage. The Rocky bar already has a well deserved reputation for being a very well thought out chocolate covered biscuit. At 28mm by 80mm its quite diminutive but its real milk chocolate covering makes up for its small size by being one of the nicest we have tried. With the Chocomania Fox's have put no less than four distinct chocolate based components together. A crunchy chocolate biscuit base, with raised sides holds a small tablet of chocolate cream. On top of this is balanced a strip of chocolate sauce and finally the whole lot is covered in the chocolate we have already spoken of. This level of attention and detailing in a small biscuit bar demands respect. What does it taste like? Well with this level of chocolate action, unsurprisingly it tastes like a crunchy chocolate, and is perilously close to ejecting itself from the Venn diagram of biscuits altogether. Perhaps Fox's recognise that this is indeed a biscuit at the very limits of the biscuit world, and have decided to limit its production, as the public may not be ready for such a thing. Or maybe they ran out of Chocolate.