Your ViewsKeep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions. To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin). Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com | If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay! | Your e-Mails |
Sara Tumalty |
Hi Nicey
Thanks for clearing that little one up. I think that you should go on with your choice of bicky. I must say I have never been a big fan of the fig roll but I’ll be backing it all the way… Come on Australia!!
Thanks
Sara |
Nicey replies: Thank you Sara,
You are very gracious. I have to say I didn't realise that Jason was actually interviewing me this morning but then I was a bit out of it as the Wife left in the middle of the night (to go on a girls weekend to Poland (she has strict instructions to bring back exotic Polish Jaffa Cakes) ) and a car alarm woke me up twice after that. Then just before waking I was having a strange dream where the girl from Big Brother who was the actress who pretended to be Australian was pinching a variety of sandwich cream biscuits from a conference room which was sited in the middle of a very busy road here in Cambridge. I think one of the biscuits might have been a form of Canadian Maple syrup biscuit, judging by the colour of its cream. I however didn't mind as I was only on my second best bicycle.
Have a nice sensible Friday and a lovely weekend.
Nicey |
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Steve Pettifer
Iced Gems Review |
Sir
In a day of remarkable co-incidences, I note with dismay that Iced Gems were placed as the 6th yuckiest biscuit behind the very-deserving-of-revulsion pink wafers and fig rolls. Only this lunchtime did I discover that the people who stock our mangy vending machines here at work had, in an all-too-rare moment of inspired brilliance placed a bag of iced gems in one of the machines. Having not had them for years I immediately purchased what has to be one of the all time classic biscuits and sated my desire of sugary lumps of icing and biscuit bases. This led to me idly wondering why water biscuits are called water biscuits (slow day at the office) and a quick Google later I happened upon your site by way of a review of Jamaican water biscuits. After a contented browse and some sage noddings regarding your conclusions on Jaffa Cakes, I was horrified to see the Iced Gem, that marvellous staple of kids’ birthday party food, being universally rejected by the biscuit loving public. To rub salt in the wounds, I also note that the singularly disgusting Fig Rolls somehow also figured highly in both the regular and favourite charts and that the magnificent and criminally underrated Bourbon cream being beaten by Fig Rolls in the favourites section!
This unthinkable heresy says only one thing: the biscuit eating public have been led astray. I think you should start a campaign immediately to promote these shining examples of the biscuit maker’s art and help them regain what is rightfully theirs – the number one and two slots in the regular and favourite charts and to leave the yukky chart immediately. This should be done because they are an important part of our heritage, and not at all because I am a random wackjob with too much time on their hands and who happens to like these biscuits. Not at all. Oh no.
Yours disgustedly
Steve “Bourbon King” Pettifer |
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Lizzy Arnott |
Dear Nicey and Wifey,
A while ago, I saw one of your readers posted a link to a website where somebody had tried to make a massive Jaffa cake (which didn't quite work, possibly because they tried to shoehorn it into being vegan). Anyway, as a Jaffa cake enthusiast I gave them link to a few of my nearest and dearest, and my friend sent me back a link to this site, where they do the same thing with lots of biscuits and snacks, including a rather wonderful Giant Party Ring and Giant Tea Cake. There's also another Giant Jaffa Cake attempt, only marginally more successful.
Anyway, hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
With cakey love,
Lizzy Arnott x
PS. I've contacted you before about a debate in my office about cakes and buns - we're a tad obsessed with any kind of tea accompaniment. So I thought, as an office project, we should try to contribute to pimpmysnack, but we've had trouble coming up with something that should be made massive. Any ideas? |
Nicey replies: Giant Fig Roll. |
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Tim Walters |
Hello Nicey
I much enjoy your website, devoted as it is to... well the best things in life.
I've just voted in your current biscuit poll (but not currant biscuit poll obviously). I think it's a grand idea to show pictures of what you've just voted for, and the poll leaders.
This, however, leads on to my problem.
My favourite biscuits are from the hobnob family. I find that local supermarkets tend not to stock the
dark chocolate hobnobs, so for reasons of (local) exclusivity they are the worthy recipient of my "best" vote. (Honourable mention must go to the figrolls that some misguided fools have shown as "yuckiest"). I notice that the pictures used for dark chocolate hobnob and dark chocolate digestive appear to be ONE AND THE SAME. Obviously I realise that biscuit production methods might mean the topping is
applied in identical faashion to both biscuits. In which case I will accept your categoric assurance that the pictures are genuine. Might I be so bold as to suggest that side views could be shown in addition, so that no such confusion ensues.
I am pleased to see pink wafers getting the scorn they deserve. Quite how coloured cardboard comes to be sold as a comestible is beyond me. A dishonourable mention to Kimberleys. Not sure why they aren't a clear second place.
Keep up the good work
Tim Walters |
Nicey replies: Tim,
You have of course spotted my guilty secret, namely that I didn't have a dark chocolate Hobnob picture so switched in a Dark Digestive. It's also plainly time that I sorted out the votes and told everybody what has been happening. I shall get to it right away.
I can say however in advance that the Top 10s are as follows:
Favourite
- Dark Chocolate Digestive
- Milk Chocolate Digestive
- Milk Chocolate Hobnob
- Jaffa Cake
- Gingernut
- Dark Chocolate Hobnob
- Chocolate Caramel Digestive
- Hobnob
- Custard cream
Regular
- Digestive
- Milk Chocolate Digestive
- Dark Chocolate Digestive
- Gingernut
- Rich Tea
- Jaffa Cake
- Hobnob
- Custard cream
- Choc chip cookie
- Bourbon
Yucky
- Pink Wafers
- Fig Roll
- Wagonwheel
- Rich Tea
- Lemon Puff
- Iced Gems
- Gingernut
- Jaffa cake
- Garibaldi
- Nice
Well done to the Gingernut and Jaffa cake for appearing in all three top 10s. Also we would like to add that the Jaffa cake is of course still a small cake despite its inclusion in the poll. Mind you maybe the VAT man will use this very poll as evidence next time they thrash out the eternal debate. |
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Aimee Jones |
Dear Nicey, Wifey and younger member of staff,
Loving the toast rack icon - bordering on the inspired! The Thermos flask is also a small triumph, but my strongest memories of flask based activities as a child do not include tea. The beaches here in Wales are indeed fantastic, but can be a little nippy even during the summer months. So Mam would often pack a thermos full of hot baked beans along with the sandwiches and whatnots when an outing to the seaside was in the offing - does this go against the Thermos ethos? Also, to return to the toast rack, will this be utilised for other toasted baked goods? I am thinking crumpets, tea cakes and slightly out of season Hot Cross Buns?
Sterling work as ever,
Aimee Jones |
Nicey replies: Firstly, yes I fully expect the new Toast icon to crop up whenever the broader issue of toasting raises its head. This is certainly in keeping with the general bandying around of icons such as the butter icon.
Secondly flasks of hot baked beans sounds utterly fantastic, I would be thinking of having a tee-shirt made that proclaims that you were raised in this way. Hoorah for your Mum and her bean flasks. I would of course still require a flask of tea to wash them down with.
Thirdly at Easter we were sat on a couple of Welsh beaches with our flask. The first attempt was a major disaster, having set out with the younger members of staff to dam up the stream that runs through Merthyr Mawr sand dunes. The stream had dried up, so we struck out for the coast, and anybody who knows the locale will know that this is quite a hike. No matter for I had provisions, or so I thought. On reaching the beach, we had forgotten the Fig Rolls, the Jaffa Cakes and the milk. I tried to console myself with a cup of black tea, which Wifey and Nanny Nicey declined. No, despite the claims of those who like it, black tea is fairly foul (they actually know this but insist that we should all drink it), especially when you really want a proper cup. I tried to amuse myself by attempting to construct a working cigarette lighter from the dozen or so I collected from the shore line, not that I smoke, I just thought it would be a useful survival trick in a sort of useless alternate Ray Mears way. |
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