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 |
Jordan Torbiak |
While living in Canada i am somewhat removed from the biscuit world, I occasionally am able to enjoy a good biscuit (although crackers seem to be more common around my house). I agree with the majority of your reviews, but I find pink wafers to be not only the best wafers available, but one of the better varieties found in the entire biscuit trichotomy. Fig Newtons have always had a strange hold on me; I particularly enjoyed them in my early years. Lately "Dad's" oatmeal and choc chip cookies make for a good lunch time supplement to a sandwich.
Thank you for your informative reviews
Jordan Torbiak
Alberta, Canada |
Nicey replies: Thank you for those thoughts.
I tried Pink Wafers again this week, in a grim experiment instigated by a work mate (Rimmingtons, Rinky dink Pink Panther wafers no less). Maybe it was the vitamins and minerals supplements as each wafer contained 10% of the RDA of zinc, iron, Vitamin C, B12, A folic acid, thiamin, and riboflavin, but they tasted bloody awful. I tried to think of something that might taste that bad and decided that stretches of tha A13 between Dagenham and Purfleet would probably hold their own in a taste test. |
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Spyder Johnson |
Dear Nicey,
I was recently recommended your page by a tea-drinking, biscuit eating friend and have found it to be most interesting, informative and entertaining. However, I am shocked that you have not yet reviewed the mighty and legendary 'Club' biscuits. These biscuits are great for many reasons: not only did they have the best and most catchy TV Biscuit-Ad Theme Tune in the world ("If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club!"), but they also came in a variety of flavours which was an excellent marketing technique as you got a certain feeling that for some reason you had to 'collect' them all! I remember the mint variety and the fruit variety (with raisins - which were somewhat softer and jucier than the others), there was also a milk variety which I never tried and therefore still perplexes me. There was also a choc hazlenut variety released a number of years after club's first appearance and they may have been released under a slightly different name, such as 'Club de Luxe' or similar, I'm not entirely sure. Anyhow, these handy-sized miniature snacks were just great to find tucked away inside your Stars Wars lunch box at primary school (remember those? - with matching flasks - 'do not sip hot drinks through spout' - excellent!) alongside your beef paste butties. They make a refreshing change from the ever-shrinking Wagonwheel any day! AND... they really did have a LOT of chocolate on them - you could bite off each end, without your teeth penetrating the biscuit, and end up with a thick slab of pure chocolate in your mouth - Bliss! Please review them! |
Nicey replies: You've hit a raw nerve there Mr Webb. Indeed Club biscuits were once as you described them, their very reputation built on the amount of chocolate they carried on their exterior. My favorite was the orange Club which I would have with a cup of tea in my student common room circa 1982-1985. However, you obviously haven't had one of late or you would be as distressed as I am about the state they are now in. They no longer have a lot of chocolate on them!!! The French (Danone) took over Jacobs biscuits and the new Euro club is a sad shadow of its former glory. They are now longer flatter and with a thin film of chocolate over them. I have only seen Orange club biscuits, I don't know if they have dropped fruit and mint altogether. I can only guess at the anguish and trauma for the blokes at Jacobs when their life's work was turned into a travesty of its former self. This is why I haven't been able to bring my self to review Club biscuits. |
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CAH |
Hold the phone, there, Biscuit Boy! I'm always in shock when I see a package of Fig Newtons in a grocery store. Why? Because I'm quite sure that they've been sitting on shelves everywhere since the early 1960's. The same Newtons get dusted by store cleaners every week. I've never seen a Nabisco truck unload a supply of Fig Newtons in a grocery loading dock...ever. Please be advised that even if the crust on the Newton was modified for The Yank's favorite pursuit, mass consumption, we don't like them nor do we eat them - ruling out your theory that we eat them in bulk.
While we Yanks love nothing more than to ingest large quantities of empty calories, we do draw the line with stuff that tastes absolutely horrid. (Pork rinds an exception, of course.) Only painted old ladies in nursing homes and the poor hapless kids who visit them would dare to eat a Fig Newton! Why, it got *so* bad for Nabisco, they tried to lure us with a Strawberry Newton or some nonsense. We didn't buy it. Literally and figuratively. If we're going to eat biscuits, we demand our high fat, higher fat, double chocolate chunk with every rainforest nut AND lard inside cookie. Like, Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chips. Hot out of the (mall) oven and guaranteed to attach to your intestines after chewed to a glue-like nugget! Now, that's (a biscuit to you,) a damn fine cookie to us. |
Nicey replies: Thanks for that well meaning attempt to put me off the scent but we both know that the States is a big place so some of your fellow Americans must be scoffing Newtons, or else Nabisco would have canned them. Perhaps if you got hold of some proper Fig Rolls, you would come to terms with your Fig Newtons and even the Strawberry ones, which I have tried once. |
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Michele Cosgrove |
Are bourbon creams simply a chocolate version of the custard cream? |
Nicey replies: That is an appealing theory, a bit like Lamarckin vs Darwinian evolution. However modern biscuit scholars now realise that this is a case of parallel evolution in the vanilla and chocolate biscuit cream worlds, So whilst the two may appear related they do in fact have quite separate heritages. Simply tot up the similarities vs the differences. Similar, two biscuits and cream filling. Differences shape, sugar bits, patterns, placement of holes, and of course flavour. Thats 2 vs 4.
So short answer, No. |
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D Berry |
Im sorry but i have to disagree with you on your slating of the pink wafer,which i believe to be one of the best biscuits ever invented. However i will forgive you if you incorporate the iced party ring and/or the jammie dodger(the original one with cream in the middle as well as jam) in your biscuit of the week sometime. If you could do this I would be eternally greatful. |
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