Nabisco Nutter Butter
Wednesday 31 Dec 2003
	Recently Biscuit Enthusiast Mandy took a trip to New York, and being a forward thinking type of person she acquired two packs of the most extreme examples of American biscuits (cookies yes, yes..) she could find. So I thought we could round out 2003 with a look at these peanut shaped articles. Now obviously anyone with a nut allergy would best avoid being in the same room as these things. Just in case you thought you might get away with it the pack assures us that these biscuits are 'Made with real peanut butter'. How one would go about producing fake, or virtual peanut butter and what you would use to make it is beyond me. No doubt such a thing could be made at great cost using some amazing form of food engineering out of soy beans, but 'real' peanut butter is probably a fraction of the cost, and doesn't require a 30 million dollar development program over 5 years. So 'real' peanut butter it is then. Just in case we still weren't convinced about the credentials of the peanuts, its also pointed out that Planters peanuts have been used. Planters was founded in 1906 by an Italian immigrant and fronted since 1916 by Mr Peanut sporting a cane and wearing a monocle and top hat with 'Mr Peanut' written on it. Merging with Nabisco in 1981 its inevitable that we should have some kind of joint offering from the two product lines. If you were thinking that this is just some esoteric little oddity from the States then think again. Over 1 billion of them are consumed each year, that's well over 15 thousand metric tonnes, as befits the 9th best selling biscuit in the US. The biscuits are fairly long at 74mm and are arranged in a sandwich configuration. A 1mm deep layer of sweetend peanut butter made from peanuts, corn syrup solids and hydrogenated rapeseed, cottonseed and soybean oil, adheres the two 5mm deep biscuits. The biscuits themselves have some rolled oats in them and were actually quite crispy with the distinctive peanut husk design being faithfully rendered on each one of them. I actually like peanut butter so I was keen to try these. None the less I was pleasantly surprised that the peanut flavour wasn't too strong. The biscuits themselves were generally passable, and if it hadn't have been for the Peanut butter would have probably made their way quite happily in the world. So taken as an ensemble, we have a not overly sweet crispy sandwich biscuit with a slightly gritty and mellow peanut flavour. Whether Mandy chooses to eat the pack she brought back for her self after reading this, remains to be seen.  Your feedback 5 messages

Iced Gems
Wednesday 17 Dec 2003
	It's 1850 and in the town of Reading, Berkshire, emerging biscuit giant Huntley and Palmer is experimenting with some new biscuit technology. However, the new biscuits emerge from the oven having actually shrunken. Thomas Huntley likes the resulting mini biscuits which are christened Gems and they sell well. Sixty years later in 1910 they add icing and children's birthday parties would incomplete without these mini biscuits from here on in. In the 1970s Huntley and Palmer, Peek Frean and Jacobs joined to form Associated Biscuits. American biscuit giant Nabisco took over Associated Biscuits in 1982, and the company was renamed as the Jacobs Bakery Ltd in 1989 and acquired by Danone. Now made in Liverpool there are very few biscuits that can trace their origins back 150 years, and which everybody can remember from their childhood even if you have just had your telegram from the Queen. Now I have to say that it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I approached the review pack which consisted of six mini bags of Iced Gems. I've always pictured them as a sort of sweetened gravel. When visiting our local builders merchants I find myself subconsciously looking for hundred weight bags of them amongst pea shingle and quarter inch chippings. Other manufacturers have adopted the mini bag format but Iced Gems have been available like this for donkey's years. There seems to have been a some changes to the Iced Gem since I last had them, er, probably about thirty years ago. The changes however seem to be mainly confined to the icing which is no bad thing. Now some you may have to help me with this but I'm sure there used to be a pale green Iced Gem. Today's iced gems have five colours, white, yellow, orange, red and purple. Chocolate versions are also now available but we thought we'ed stick with the classics. I also don't recall the icing actually tasting of anything that tasted of anything apart from sugar. I also seem to remember there being some fairly lethal sharp points on the icing which could inflict minor havoc on the roof of one's mouth. So I don't know if I'm happy or sad to see that the points have largely gone and that the icing actually has discernible flavours, slightly fruity ones at that. In fact I really was put in mind of various berries, red currents and blackberries. A ten point piping nozzle places the icing some where on the base and vertical orientation of the biscuit is pot luck. Just in case I was getting carried away, the biscuit base is still as dry and uninspiring as ever. Back in the late 1850's things must have been pretty rough if just straight non-Iced Gems were a big hit. If we hopped in our time machine and went back to the mid eighteen hundreds armed with a pack of Chocolate Hobnobs or even just a simple fruit shortcake no doubt we could actually produce sensory overload and stupefaction in the populace. The base has on the top side a small square design in the center of which is a solitary hole or 'docker' and measures 21mm by 6mm with the icing taking the whole thing to 20mm high. The underside has a series of parallel marks from the baking surface, presumably some form of wire mesh. Fairly unique among biscuits the edge has a pattern too, vertical scoring some what like a pound coin. So yes I mildly enjoyed these little old biscuits, but I did find myself strangely missing the puncture wounds in the top of my mouth. Needless to say the younger members of staff devoured them with relish.  Your feedback 11 messages

Arnott's Gaiety
Tuesday 9 Dec 2003
	Today the England Rugby team paraded the Rugby world cup trophy through the streets of London and were bestowed with the freedom of the city. Jubilant fans waved large stuffed Kangaroos which had the St Georges cross spray painted on them. At NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown we are certainly not going to gloat over this especially as the Wife is in charge of Rugby supporting and is, as many of you know, Irish. So as a gesture of goodwill we have dipped into our Simon Smith box of Aussie goodies to pull out this weeks biscuit, Arnott's Gaiety. Now there are signs that the great Tescos Arnott's Tim Tam experiment is on the wane, with the antipodean chocolate biscuit bar disappearing from our local Tescos store. When Ross Arnott was looking around for a name for the biscuit he had just invented based on the British Penguin bar he took the name of the 1958 Kentucky Derby winner 'Tim Tam'. Presumably at some point there must have been another horse, or possibly a pony named 'Gaiety'. Naming products after race horses could be a very good plan actually, as in general they have fairly daft names, and it would give everybody a good laugh. It would be nice to clean the oven with a big can of 'Shergar', or maybe spreading a good thick layer of 'Red rum' on your toast. Arnotts obviously think they have a blinder of a name as the have made it a trademark. So what ever it was you wanted to call Gaiety forget it, you've been beaten to it, try and rebuild your shattered dreams and move on. The waft of chocolate emanating from the pack definitely has the unmistakable scent of Tim Tam about it, and the sheen and finish is also like that of the Tim Tam. So I'll hazard a guess that the two biscuits share more in common than just their manufacturer. In fact the pack goes on to say "At Arnott's we make our own real milk chocolate. We source the finest cocoa ingredients from around the world, and blend them with milk products from Australian pastures. That's why your Arnott's Gaiety tastes so much better!". Of course the neglect to tell us, what it is it is that tastes better than. That's a pity as of course we would have been keen as ever to compare them. What isn't immediately obvious is that the wafers have been sandwiched together using Hazelnut praline and honey, as neither of these flavours is particularly obvious at all. At a mere 52x28x15mm the Gaiety isn't exactly large, but at least Arnotts have put 12 in a pack unlike the odd numbers we associate with the Tim Tam. So yet again Arnotts have produced a sweet and carefully put together little biscuit. I'm not sure how it would fare against some of the great chocolate covered wafers of the northern hemisphere, such as the Tunnocks or Blue Riband who have a distinct size advantage. The fancy filling seems a little bit lost, but presumably its necessary to get the taste Arnotts were after. Just in case you thought I had made the name up here is a parting pack shot.