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HomeForCakeTeaAndBiscuits

Bahlsen Crumblys

Monday 25 Aug 2003


Its rare to come across something in the biscuit world thats really not like anything you've ever had before, very rare indeed. So its with a great deal of genuine excitement that we bring you something new this week from Bahlsen and their pan european biscuit operation, and just starting to become available in the UK. Its also brilliant to see jam and lemon curd taking a front seat in biscuitry although inevitably chocolate is there to keep them company.

We have all three Crumblys pictured alongside from top to bottom, Chocolate and Hazelnut, Lemon and Blueberry. Each biscuit is like a little flan case made from crisp buttery biscuit. The well is filled and then covered with more little bits crumbly biscuit. Made in Balhsen's french facility, and clad in very French packing. Despite the rough ride we normally give the French's attempts at biscuits, they are truly world leaders in the small tart department (insert your own amusing joke here!). So on unpacking the Crumblys and finding their true nature I was expectant of something well executed and as always with Bahlsen continental in flavour.

I wasn't disappointed, the Lemon or Citron flavour, really did have that authentic French Tart au Citron Taste, with the buttery biscuit base providing the perfect complement. Now I love a Lemon Curd tart, but a Tart au Citron has its own distinct balance of fresh lemons, sugar, eggs and butter. The Lemon Crumbly was aligned with its compatriot. The crumbly bits on the top provided a little bit of extra bulk and provide a defensive shield against anybody thinking about direct assaults on the fruit filling.

Next came the Blueberry or 'Myrtilles' in French. Again an excellent fruit flavour. Blueberries can be a bit hard to pin down, and if all you've ever had are blueberry muffins then you won't have a clue what they taste like. Try a Blueberry Crumbly then you'll know.

Finally and also interestingly came the Choco-Noisette, or chocolate and Hazelnut. Out of the three this was the only pack with Italian in the languages on the back. Make of that what you will, not having visited Italy I don't have the context to interpret the particular subtleties of this pan european biscuit roll out. Anyhow, again a very nice biscuit and very much that Nutella type flavour so all in order there. The Wife not being a big fruit eater picked on these instantly as her favourites.

So now for the bad news, you might have to wait to next year before you can get your hands on these. They will be around in a few stores starting about now, but not the big supermarkets. Also if I had my way they would be twice the size.

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Tesco's Finest Soft Eating Orange and Cranberry Cookies

Sunday 17 Aug 2003


Well you might think with a title as long as that there would be little left to say about this week's biscuit of the week, however, I'll have a go. As we mentioned in this months newsletter, Tesco's have been adding some new biscuits to their Finest range. After the recent austerity of the Morning Coffee and Bickiepeg review I thought it was only fair if we pushed the boat out and tried something a bit different. This is fairly much the antithesis of the Bickiepeg being both aimed at adults and designed to be soft to eat.

Now when something gets called a 'Cookie' in the UK we do it with good reason. The reasoning here is that the classic limp and barely cooked sort of texture of the American cookie is being portrayed here. There are various subliminal messages that are carried with this type of cookie texture, such as they were so impatiently awaited that they were removed from the oven as soon as they could have remotely been considered cooked, to be devoured probably whilst still hot. The second and very related one is that the mixture tasted really good raw, so baking is just a way of firming it up so its not so sticky. Those cookie shops in shopping arcades/malls that fill the surrounding air with the smell of baking, by and large knock out some very sickly barely cooked dough in a bag. It is not with out some irony that our local one is right next to the shop that sells clothes for the larger lady, both shops seem happy with that arrangment. The cookie can be made even more sickly by scaling it up to the size of a dinner plate covering it in nasty gak-in-a-bag icing and then presenting it to some poor unfortunate office worker as a birthday surprise.

Luckily Tesco's have seen sense and produced something here that uses the power of Orange and Cranberry to balance out any potentially overly sweet taste. Orange oil, peel and some lemon peel all provide a vivid citrus backdrop against which fairly large pieces of Cranberry are placed plus a few raisins. This provides plenty of interest, enough even to stop you scoffing them down with out a thought. The cookies, all eight of them were all fairly much individuals and again this is usually indicative of a premium product.

To complete the whole alure of the product Tesco's have put a serving suggestion on the pack, which I regret to say I didn't heed. The suggestion is to take six of the cookies and build a small leaning and somewhat out of focus tower, next to which one places three Cranberries and two slices of Orange. Then take the remaining two cookies and break one in half and place the whole lot in the foreground so that they are in focus. Hoorah! for serving suggestions how would we get by without them.

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Brandt Hobbits kernig

Monday 11 Aug 2003




So its off to Deutschland for this weeks biscuit of the week, for two very good reasons. The first being the small stock of German biscuits in the the NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown biscuit bunker, thanks to Tom Winter's fabulous parcel from Hamburg. The second the hilarious German to English translations courtesy of Google. 'Kernig' which I'm sort of assuming is German for 'kernels' is translated to 'main header bits'. Imagine if in the future we all had wearable PCs that translated everything you said into German then back again via Google and then uttered it in a synthetic voice. That could make just buying a packet of Polos and a newspaper as challenging as negotiating the Middle East peace process. And talking of hot places such as the Middle East, Southern England is experiencing its hottest heat wave in recorded history right now, so if I'm rambling a bit blame the heat.

So all that universal translator nonsense in sci-fi shows, you know the one, where people from worlds that have never even met before stand there nattering on about how nice it is to live on their planet, and how they recently had their kitchen redecorated, and how good the local schools are and so on. Rubbish! The French who are our nearest neighbours and from whom large parts of modern English come from have words that have no English translation such as 'Terrior'. What is a universal translator going to do with that! Either it would have to skip those bits, or pass it on untranslated or maybe a take a long sort of stab at it. Either way the conversation would be more 'How long have you had those ____ growing from your head?' / 'How long have you had those gnnnnsshargvvv growing from your head?' / 'How long have you had those things that look like road kill in plastic bags with little flashing lights inside at least from where I'm standing they do, growing out of your head?'. To which the answer is probably 'We have to stand in this special sort of unpleasant smelling mud due to or radically different body chemistry, which is similar but not identical to that purple stuff Windowlene that you can't get any more, but people used to wipe it all over the windows of shops that were closing down'. Yes that would all be quite believable.

So back to the biscuits, well lets just quietly leave to one side the whole Hobbit thing. I'm sure they have their reasons and its not for us to cast judgments on other nations attempts to name biscuits. It must be the heat, of course we should pass judgment on other nations unfortunate biscuit naming. If we don't who else will? Well its got to be a nod to our own great HobNob, and possibly something to do with Tolkien. Either way it has that slightly embarrassing Euro angle that Swedish songsters 'Europe' captured so well in 'The Final Countdown' when they rhymed 'Seen us' with 'Venus'.

Oh yes back to the biscuit. Made in Poland by Bahlsen and if my reading of the French version of the ingredients is correct, mostly oats, wholemeal flour, wheatgerm a bit of oil, sugar, raising agents and flavouring. A little smaller than I would have liked the Hobbit did seem quite familiar rather however is not as sweet as the oat biscuits we have like the HobNob. Unfortunately its the last ingredient that really lets down this little biscuit in my eyes. What could otherwise be a very serviceable euro oat biscuit has a slightly artificial twang of vanilla essence which smothers any legitimate flavours there in. Still there is a glimer of hope here and I suppose one could sort of get by on these if you found yourself in Germany and you had scoffed your supply of proper biscuits.

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