Your Views

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Your e-Mails

Ross Holmes	Dear Nicey, Since we spend most of our working day sat on our arses we actually enjoy a nice cup of tea and a stand up. It was during one of our daily tea breaks whilst discussing the various merits of Fox's Butter Crinkle Crunch and the dunking abilities of Rich Tea Fingers that we decided it would be a great idea to create a website dedicated to the pastime of tea drinking and biscuit appreciation.  Surfing the net several minutes later looking for some pre-scanned images of biscuits for our new site we stumbled upon your fantastic site and soon realised that you had surpassed anything that we would be capable of.  Therefore we'd like to congratulate you on your excellent work in the promotion of all things tea and biscuit and would like you to just give those of us who like a nice cup of tea and a stand up a quick mention.  Also would it be possible to provide some advice on sensible dunking technique for various biscuits, as one of our members is experiencing regular "snap-offs" during dunking, perhaps you could provide this for our top ten regulars in our biscuit tin (in no particular order) :- Fox's Butter Crinkle Crunch Custard Creams Bourbons Malted Milk Rich Tea Rich Tea Fingers Chocolate Digestives Ginger Nuts Chocolate Malted Milk Digestives
	Nicey replies: Ross, Thats an admirable biscuit tin running list you've got there. Also good to see that you are taking good care of your crinkle crunches. Personally I would like to see a fruit shortcake or maybe a HobNob in there to get a good all round tin. I'm a bit of a reformed dunker myself, but when I did partake of that habit it really came down to confidence and timing, these can not be gained overnight but must be learnt. Out of the biscuits in your list I would only dunk the Rich teas, Digestives and as rank outsiders the Crinkle crunch. Dunking chocolate biscuits or cream filled biscuits is generally a no-no although I understand that many people do choose to do this. Cow biscuits are much too pretty dunk and should have the cows nibbled out of them. Gingernuts are all about crunch so again I wouldn't choose to dunk them. Of course when dunking any large diameter biscuit such as the digestive, one has a window of opportunity, whilst the tea level in you cup/mug is high enough to let you get the edge in. As the tea level falls much more dunking and nibbling are required to access the tea. Don't feel bad to ignore all of this if it threatens your personal enjoyment of tea and biscuits. As for the standing up, it sounds a bit foolhardy, and I'm sorry that your working conditions drive you to such outlandish behavior. I hope that this doesn't extend to your enjoyment of tea outside of the workplace, where sitting down is certainly the optimal way to drink it.
the gnome	Dear nice people, i am very impressed with your website and i think it is a valuable source of all biscuit information, there is however one area that you have overlooked. This is the area of tea. Which variety of tea should be consumed with which variety of biscuit. And does the tea blend affect the dunking dynamics? Full fat or semi-skimmed? Bgs or leaves? As you can see this area is largely uninvestigated and i think that even a little research could shake the world of biscuiteers to its foundations. Yours in faith the gnome
	Nicey replies: We drink PG in bags with a dash of full fat no sugar, this consitutes a NiceCupOfTea. We don't intend to change this scenario.
Kim Morgan	Dear Biscuit People, I find your site a truly informative resource and am in awe of the sensible and relaxed website you have built; well done! I was particularly intrigued when I happened upon the review of the "Mikado" as I recently experienced a packet of the straw-type Mikado while on holiday in Venice. When on vacation abroad I take great delight in experiencing the everyday life of the natives, this means taking a little break from the usual fare of cafes, bars, museums, galleries and sex shops (perhaps that last one really only applies in Amsterdam) to explore the fare on offer in the local supermarkets. Being a great admirer of the biscuit as a culinary genre I usually make straight for the sweet section; thus has been the case in Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin and most recently Venice. When settling down at the end of a hectic day exploring the art of that most watery of Italian cities, my dear boyfriend and I sat down to try the selection of biccies I had bought from the local supermarket. There was a packet of strange Kinder things, a little like a Twix gone horribly wrong, but pleasant as a change, and a packet of Mikados. The Mikado, in its non-marshmallow form, is a very interesting confection. Anyone who has carried out heavy-duty arc welding or has played with a sparkler on Guy Fawkes night will be at home with the general form. The milk chocolate covers a thin straw about 2mm in diameter by 8cm long leaving about 1cm uncovered at the end. The material comprising the straw is reminiscent of a pretzel, or twiglet with all the marmite licked off, and the taste experience is indeed similar to those chocolate covered Pretzels that we saw a few years ago. The taste is pleasant, but nothing special; a little dry - the central straw seems a little "doughy" when chewed, and not completely cohesive with the chocolate covering, although the covering is quite generous. However, this would make a very sophisticated accompaniment to a cup of tea where you want to impress without risking your guests or your self becoming engrossed in the biscuits or the whole thing ending up in a pig-out. Dainty nibbling is the order of the day with the Mikado. A packet contains some thirty or so in packaging similar to a cigarette pack, plastic covered foil retaining the biscuits freshness. I was also pleasantly impressed by the fact that only one or two had suffered damage; when one opens a box of Matchsticks, one is usually presented with a few breakages, anything up to 15%, I would say that the Mikados suffered fewer than 5% damage. One flaw of employing the Pretzel centre is that it is no good for sucking up tea (I must admit that I took a stash of Sainsburys Red Label teabags with me, English Breakfast Tea, as sold abroad, leaves a great deal to be desired - flavour for one thing...) as it doesn't conduct the fluid. All in all this is an intriguing take on the biscuit as it totally eschews many of the traditions of biscuit making - volume and shape being completely outside the normal parameters of most. I only wish I knew of your site before I went away as I would have brought back a selection of foreign biscuits to share with other appreciators of biscuitry. Keep up the good work, and dunk!
Justin Homer	Hello. Never e-mailed you before, son, but I'm sure that you'll be delighted to see this report. It's the proof of what we all knew, deep down in our tannin-stained souls. Tea is the ultimate health drink. Sod fruity smoothies, or carrot juice, or any of that other rubbish. It's tea we need. I only wish that I'd been one of those lucky "human volunteers". I only wonder whether they got biscuits with their experimental tea? If so, maybe it's actually your average 'penguin' or 'garibaldi' that's really the good stuff? I'm more than willing to find out, should NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown wish to fund any further research into this important issue.
	Nicey replies: Yes I think we all instinctively know that. I see the research was done by Americans in America, we can only guess at the results they would have got if they had used proper tea. As you also speculate were biscuits involved, and of course were they seated? It all has a bearing.
Mark Binnington	I must say I find your biscuit reviews both informative and useful, however I think you may have overlooked something about the whole nice cup of tea thing. What about the kettle? The kettle is an integral part of the whole tea experience - should one use a filter kettle, or perhaps a Britta filter jug or both, which kettle is best? Much like biscuit dunking affects the tea taste so does the quality of the kettle which boiled the water in the first place.. Being a selfish git I bring this up as I am looking to purchase a replacement kettle for our office and being massive tea drinkers the kettle takes a hammering. Our aging Russell Hobbs filter kettle is indeed a decripit and sad sight. Anyhoo, if you or anyone else out there in the great wide tea drinking world could recommend a filter kettle I'd be most grateful.
	Nicey replies: Oh yes a well designed kettle is a must. We have very hard water here so our kettles take a real bashing. We had a massively noisy (Morphy Richards rapid boil I think) kettle with a base which was circular and electrical connector in the middle, which had amazing acoustic properties. It was so effective at conducting the noise from the kettle to the work surface that it sounded like a passenger jet passing over and made it really tricky for anybody on the phone in the office. However, reading the blurb it seemed like the perfect kettle for the office.
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