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 |
Lisa Power
Kimberley and Chocolate Kimberley Review |
Hello Mr. Nicey,
I discovered your site today after hearing the details of your news story on Chocolate Kimberleys being available in Britain on the radio. On reading your news story, and the various comments (particularly Rachael's), I did a little search on t'internet and have discovered this company who distributes Kimberleys, plus their 'sister biscuits' Mikados and Coconut Creams, not to mention a whole host of other Irish delicacies, to a large number of UK supermarkets. I've just been to my local Budgens (Porchester Rd,London W2) to see for myself and there they were!
Really like your site by the way!
Best wishes,
Lisa |
Nicey replies: Thanks Lisa you have probably got to the bottom of it there. Wifey will be off for some Tayto Cheese and Onion crisps now as well as a few Chocolate Kimberleys and a bottle of red lemonade. I wonder if these O'Kanes are any relation to NCOTAASD regular Keith whose email precedes this. |
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Keith O'Kane |
Dear Nicey and the Wife,
Lent is almost upon us once again and, as with previous years, two of my colleagues have resolved to give up chocolate and cakes for the duration. As you might expect, discussions have turned to the exact classification of certain items. One colleague is claiming that it is ok to eat waffles as they are not cakes. This is a fairly reasonable view except that waffles are in essence a fancy form of pancake which is a cake by name if not necessarily by nature.
The other colleague is claiming that the Cherry Bakewell is permitted as, in her view, it is a pie, not a cake.
I feel that this is a gross abuse of the classification system and the Cherry Bakewell is a cake for three obvious reasons:
Firstly, they can be found in the cake section in the supermarket. Secondly, the Cherry Bakewell is a tart, not a pie and finally, the more popular ones are made by Mr. Kipling who is not known for making exceedingly good pies!
Can we have your expert opinion on this please so that the matter can be put to rest before the start of lent.
Regards,
Keith O'Kane |
Nicey replies: Keith,
It really seems a bit self defeating giving things up for lent if you are aiming to simply to have an extended excuse to gorge your face on Mr Kipling Bakewell tarts. If you can't persude the bloke at the next desk that you are eating six packs of tarts to achieve some sort of spiritual renewal then frankly what is the point. What ever peoples views on religion, it would take a fairly dim God to be fooled by such shenanigans.
And yes of course Bakewell Tarts are cakes, as you so ably point out. |
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Edward Cieslik
Bahlsen Orange Choco Leibniz Review |
Following on from Alan Bromley’s heartfelt – if slightly un-British – review of the Choco Leibniz, I would like to add my own thoughts on this most affecting of daytime delights.
As I am now resident in New Zealand, these thoughts may seem a little rose-tinted for your usually objective reviews pages, but please bear with me as I relive the pleasures of frivolous tea-dippery denied to us expats.
Before leaving England I worked for a video games developer in Guildford. Although the work is probably of no interest whatsoever to those of even a moderately sound mind, the company bonus scheme was inspired. When we as a team had worked especially hard or achieved another “milestone”, as these things were called, we were sometimes treated to a packet of biscuits by our producer – an especially nice chap called Geoff, whom I will always imagine sitting in an old armchair with a mug of tea in one hand and a half-eaten Pims biscuit in the other.
Most of the time these biscuits were fairly run-of-the-mill affairs – custard creams or bourbons, occasionally even sleep-inducingly stodgy donuts from a well-known supermarket chain – but on ocassions when we’d been especially deserving, our producer would reveal… the Choco Leibiz.
As Alan hinted at in his review, the secret of the Choco Leibniz, I feel, is its density. The Rich Tea portion is slightly small, with rather pretentious frills at its edges, but it is combined perfectly with a thick wedge of either milk or plain chocolate welded to its underside. Had the chocolate totally enclosed the biscuit, or had a pair of Rich Tea biscuits sandwiched the chocolate, I feel the balance would be lost. As it is, the devotee can see exactly what they’re getting: a Rich Tea biscuit offset with beautiful-tasting and beautifully-crafted chocolate.
Like a Patek Phillippe watch or a Mont Blanc pen, anyone even setting eyes on such a thing can immediately see that they are dealing with a product on a different plane from those they are used to dealing with on a day-to-day basis. The chocolate, which resembles a gold ingot in both its solidity as well as its shape, looks and feels as though it has been chiselled by a master chocolatier. Its smooth sufaces and chiselled edges cannot but inspire confidence – and respect. Biting into it is like biting into a bar of the finest chocolate: firm at first, then gracefully yielding; rich, but not overpowering; solid and yet oh-so fleeting.
It is, you might say, a biscuit befitting the finer moments in life. If I ever get to an age or maturity when I can justifiably sit by a roaring fire with a glass of fine red wine and a gently smouldering cigar, I will have at my side a plate of Choco Leibniz. |
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Russ Litton |
I wonder if you can help me. I seem to recall a biscuit selection from the 70's called "Spooks". They came in various garish colours and each biscuit had it's own individual name - Ghastly Green, Blood Red etc etc
Did they in fact exist or have I simply imagined them?
Yours hopefully
Russ |
Nicey replies: We have had several emails about these in the past mainly from people trying to remember the name of them. So congratulations as you've finally come up with it. This gives us enough info to open up new entry in the missing in action section of the site. |
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Katie Drummond |
All this talk of custard and carveries reminds me of a great moment of schadenfreude I experienced as a child.
My grandfather, a retired policeman, liked to treat his family by taking them for Sunday lunch at the Metropolitan Police Club in Chigwell, Essex. Sunday lunch was a magnificent carvery. A table as long as an Olympic-sized swimming-pool stood against one wall. At the far right hand end were two jolly carvers, sharpening their huge knives promisingly over an immense joint of beef, a golden turkey and other assorted hunks of burnished protein. Down the rest of the table was spread a dizzying array of vegetables, glistening under the hot lamps. At the far left hand end was a selection of puddings to which each person could help him or herself after personally demolishing enough Sunday lunch for a family of four.
And between the last vegetable and the first pudding stood two big bowls with ladles: one brimming over (not literally, of course, that would be a bit disgusting) with a rich brown gravy; the other a font of purest 'real' custard. Imagine my ten-year-old delight when I saw a man arrive at the end of the line of vegetables, his plate heaped high with thick slices of lamb, roast parsnips, glazed carrots and all the riches the carvery had to offer, only to hesitate over the two bowls and finally plump for a generous quantity of custard ladled over every inch of his food.
I wonder what he thought when he sat down at his table and tucked in. And what on earth do you suppose he thought he was putting on his roast potatoes?
Incidentally, do you think this could be an example of the famed bottomless custard?
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Nicey replies: I reckon he thought it was cheese sauce. Certainly sounds like an impressive amount of custard, much more than you would see in the domestic setting, and probably requiring special equipment to make it such as a huge saucepan. |
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