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 |
j ac
Dad's Cookies Review |
Playbox cookies - ah they were such a favorite - weren't our tastebuds simple! sometimes I would carefully lick at the inpenetrable icing for awhile to slowly remove the design.... yes, back before video games.... Someone could make a small fortune bringing back this classic..... oh, perhaps I shouldn't have said that.....
Dads cookies - I was flying from California to Toronto, Canada in 1985... five hours in the air and a lovely older lady sitting beside me to chat with. She brought out her knitting (back before knitting needles were a threat to our safety!) and shared a few "how to knit" lessons with me inflight... even letting me work on the lovely piece she was making.... and we chatted. It turned out she was the "Mom" so to speak of the "Dad" whose recipe it was for the hallowed cookie.... Me, sitting with such a celebrity... but I had to ask "The cookies just don't taste the same as they did when I was a child.. do they?".
She smiled and responded "When my husband sold the recipe (in his retirement years) it gave the company full right to change the recipe in any way they wished....." and she was surprised and praised my discerning tastebuds....
That's my story - and I'm sticking to it. It was lovely to chat and share a cup of tea with you. |
Nicey replies: Thanks for sharing that brush with biscuit celebrities with us. |
| |
Larry Koch
Khong Guan creamy chocolate biscuits Review |
Hello,
I agree with your assessment of the Khong Guan chocolate biscuits - their chocolatiness is dubious, to say the least. Having made the mistake of buying them at a Chinese supermarket here, however, I summoned the courage to try some other Khong Guan products, generally with more satisfactory results:
KG Banana Cream - despite the artificiality of the flavouring and some questionable additives for colour (turmeric?!), really tasty
KG Custard Creams - good custard flavour, but filling is possibly either too generous or not the right consistency, as it tends to escape at the sides and stick to one's fingers
KG Orange Creams - as with the banana, the flavouring is decidedly artificial (really more orange *fragrance* than anything else) yet strangely addictive.
KG Sultana Biscuits - unfortunately many of these had shattered during shipping and they really need more sultanas in them, but it's as close as we'll get to Garibaldis here.
Hope this is useful to someone.
Regards,
Larry Koch
Toronto |
Nicey replies: Thanks Larry,
I think the basic nub of what you are saying is that we managed to try the really grotty ones. |
| |
Claire Beecroft |
Hello there,
Here in leafy Sheffield the Fig Roll crisis has been hitting hard. No major supermarket has any and only Sainsbury's has taken the sensible step of putting a little note on the shelf where the Fig Roll price ticket would usually be, explaining the 'industry-wide' shortage. I also note that unlike other retailers, they are leaving the gap on the shelf where the FR packs should be. I can only think that either they:
a) anticipate re-stocking in the near future and so don't want to waste time re-aligning the entire biscuit aisle to cover up the empty space
OR
b) see it as a fitting mark of the gravity of the situation and are leaving the space out of respect and/or as an optimistic vigil. If health and safety regulations did not prevent it I'd pop a tea-light candle in the gap myself.
On the bright side a small newsagents on Glossop Road (near to 'New Roots') has a stock of Crawfords brand Fig Rolls- not my brand of choice but obviously we can't be fussy in these difficult times. I'm limiting myself to two packs at the moment but if there are any left on the way home this afternoon I might not be able to resist.
Finger's crossed that the Turkish Fig-Farmers will be back in business soon,
Claire
|
Nicey replies: I managed to pick up a pack of Jacobs this morning so it looks like the cut then bake fig rolls are weathering the crisis for some reason. I'm very pleased to hear that you have got hold of some Crawfords as I had my doubts that they would keep on making them once Jacobs joined United Biscuits. |
| |
Emily
HobNob Review |
Hello Nicey, Wifey & YMOS,
At last! Sainsbury's are stocking the elusive dark chocolate HobNob- at least a certain branch in Greater Manchester is (I should probably keep the exact location under wraps to avoid a stampede- I don't want to be responsible for the M6 being even more gridlocked than usual). Anyway, I managed to show remarkable restraint and only bought one packet, although considerably less when I got them home and ate 3 in one go. They'd just sidled back onto the shelves as though they'd never been away- no attention drawn to them at all. I would have thought the least they deserved was a label saying "back by popular demand" or something, perhaps even their own end-of-aisle display. I've also noticed that Sainsbury's, at least the couple of branches I frequent in the Greater Manchester area, seem to have stopped selling Tim Tams, although I've had reports of branches in the South still selling them. Maybe it's a whole new North/South biscuit divide: the South gets exotic foreign biscuits, while the North gets flat cap-wearing HobNobs. I'm already picturing surreptitious meetings in a service station cafe (probably with rubbish tea in chipped mugs) somewhere in the Midlands with people from opposite ends of the country swapping packs of DC HobNobs and Tim Tams under the table before smuggling them back home and opening biscuit-speakeasies. But that's probably just my imagination running wild.
Emily |
Nicey replies: Thanks for the Dark Chocolate Hobnob tip off. Will we all start showing our age by calling them Plain rather than Dark I wonder, much in the way my Nan used to call our 1970's Sony Music centre with its pre-soft eject top loading fling it across the room cassette eject - the radiogram. Actually I'm showing my age just divulging that. Some of you are probably wondering what a cassette is.
You make a good point about the TimTams the've not been catching my eye recently either. |
| |
Richard and Sue Knight
Custard Cream Review |
Hi Nicey & Wifey
I just wanted to tell you about the 'biscuit club' we hold on a Friday evening in the snug at The Horse & Groom pub in Linby, nr Nottingham. It all started about 9 months ago when my wife accidentally told one of the other snugglers (snug regulars) that I had once created a spoof website dedicated to Custard Creams (my favourite biscuits). Incidentally, it was whilst researching for this website, about 7 years ago, that I first came across your own fabulous website which has gone from strength to strength.
Said snuggler arrived one Friday evening and as he walked in, threw a large packet of Sainsbury's custard creams at me, fortunately the alcohol had sharpened my senses and I was able to catch the packet of biscuits and prevent any major damage from befalling them.
I found myself to be the centre of attention at this point and had to explain to the assembled masses exactly what you could put on a 'custard cream' website. I told them about the fun our group, who became nicknamed "The Biscuit Boys", had at work, trying the huge variety of different makes, and in particular finding out about the 'other' uses for custard creams such as building blocks, dominoes, skittles etc and about how you could make useful articles such as a tea pot stand from said biscuits.
The evening finished with the landlord of the establishment rolling a barrel shaped measure off the bar onto a table below and trying to knock down as many of the biscuit 'skittles' as he could. For some unknown reason it was decided that we should form a biscuit club and somehow I ended up as chairman or "chair biscuit" as I prefer to be known.
Since then we have had over 30 meetings where we bring along assorted packets of biscuits which we all try and then vote on our favourite which is declared biscuit of the week. We have also had a few 'special' evenings including a cheese night, a cold cooked meats night and a sausage night and we are planning a "Puddings you can eat with custard" night in the near future.
One of the highlights of our evenings had been the ongoing saga of the Jaffa Cake which has led to many alcohol fuelled discussions taking place, but for me the absolute crowning glory was when the wife and I walked in one Friday evening to find everyone eagerly awaiting us as the Landlady had a presentation to make. Imagine my delight when I was presented with a copy of your excellent book which they had come across whilst on holiday. This tome has become the club bible and is called upon (usually without any great success) to settle any arguments over the provenance of any particular item brought along as a 'Biscuit'.
Although I had told the other members about your website I had not visited for quite some time but have now renewed my acquaintance with it and as you may see, signed up for the newsletter. I am now wondering if you would like to put a feature about our 'Biscuit Club' on your website to encourage other biscuit aficionados to form similar groups and would be willing to provide any information, pictures etc to facilitate this. Or maybe you could even start a sister site, "A Nice Pint of Beer, a Sit Down and a Biscuit". Maybe CAMRA would be interested in some sort of sponsorship deal.
Keep up the good work.
Richard & Sue Knight |
Nicey replies: Hi Richard & Sue Knight,
I'm very pleased that we have contributed in some way to your very civilised sounding biscuit and booze rituals, even if we haven't sorted out your disputes.
As for News Letters we haven't done one in forever, but since then I have created a new and mighty newsletter engine for the day job and have been toying with the idea of firing it up on NCOTAASD so you never know! |
| |
|
|
|