Your Views

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Your e-Mails

Brian Crowley	Dear Nicey and Wifey, What a lovely web site you have! Much more fun than working! Anyway, to business. I read with interest your Tim Tam vs Penguin review - I must say that even as an ex-Brit, I lean towards the Tim Tam myself. And I have tried Penguins recently, and they are not what they used to be. But seeing the special "Black Forest Fantasy" packet featured in the responses brought back into my mind the torrid controversy which occupied the staff tea room for a good fortnight a while back. "Black Forest" refers to the Black Forest cake, a cake with a strong theme of cherries (which feature prominently on the biscuit packet) as well as the inevitable chocolate. If we turn over the packet and read the ingredients, we find that these biscuits do indeed contain real cherries. 0.01% of them. That's about 2 milligrams per biscuit! I have seen the accusations of a reduction in chocolate content in order to create a market for "double coated" variety, and maybe this has caused some sensitivity about other ingredients diluting the dominance of chocolate, but surely it is taking it too far to reduce the cherry content to below the levels approved for many food additives! What can be done? Well, perhaps you can help me raise public awareness of this shabby behaviour... (Incidentally, have you tried the Chili flavoured Tim Tams? Quite nice, but not really enough chili, in my humble opinion. Probably about 0.01% I suspect...) All the best, "BC"
	Nicey replies: I think I'm more concerned about the Chilli flavour Tim Tams than the levels of Cherry in the Black Forest ones.
Luke Tim Tam vs Penguin Review	Dear Nicey and Wifey, I bought a packet of the Tim Tam's Black Forest Fantasy tonight, having seen the positive comments from one of your readers. When I first opened the packet I was very dissapointed, there are only 9 biscuits in the packet! And it is not as if they are double dipped, there is a very large gap between each biscuit. I presume it is to keep the price similar to the ordinary Tim Tam's. Recovering from this, I next noticed the rather strong smell, chocolately and sweet cherry. The biscuits are quite dark, and very crispy compared to normal Tim Tam's. Also rather then a clean break, there is a line of chewy cherry mixture down the middle between the 2 biscuits. The taste is as expected, lots of chocolate and cherry flavours. An interesting addition to the Tim Tam lineup! Luke PS Am not called Victoria, but do live in the state of Victoria.
	Nicey replies: Luke, Thanks for that report from the front line, and the lovely pack scan, it's a bit fruity isn't it? I don't know what's come over NCOTAASD today.
Garry Hrustinsky Tim Tam vs Penguin Review	Hello Mr. Nicey, I have just had a dig through your archive and found the “Tim Tam vs Penguin” debate. After living in London for several years, I do have to say that co-workers who tried to convert me to penguins were unsuccessful. Whilst they are pleasant enough (if tim tams aren’t immediately at hand), for me it is still like comparing pot noodles to a lovely home cooked lamb roast. National pride (being Australian myself) has nothing to do with it. The flavour is simply superior in a tim tam. As a little bit of an update, I thought you might like to know that there has been (yet another) product extension on the range. Amongst the several new flavours available in Melbourne, I saw black forest. According to people that I have spoken to, this is one of the best flavours they have released to date. Also, to throw a slight spanner in the works over this debate, my lovely wife, who hails from distant New Zealand shores, introduced me to chit chats (produced by Griffin’s). Looking a tad fancier than either penguins or chit chats, they have a zig-zag chocolate line running across the top. I have tried them and reckon that they do give plain tim tams a run for their money. Unfortunately I haven’t found any shops around Melbourne that stock them. Anyhow, keep up the good work. Regards, Garry Hrustinsky
Monika Duhig Weston's Wagon Wheels Review	Hello again nicey and family, Just perused an email on your site about WWs and realised that here in the Great Southern Land you can buy lots of different types of wagon wheels viz standard WWs - one to a packet in regulation size (largest in the world now? - gotta love it) biscuit sized in packs of 12 in standard WW flavour, strawberry choc (ie they are pink on the outside and taste like it) and vanilla choc (they are white - what IS the purpose of white chocolate?) mini sized in double choc and jaffa You can also buy Korean 'moon pies" by Lotte - they look like pregnant WWs and taste stange - no jam, funny oriental marsh mallow and a VW bug kind of profile. Choc bikkies are out of control in this country - saw some Kahlua flavoured slices (a mint slice with Kahlua cream) and a Black Forest gateau flavoured slice as well. Too much Wish I could get eccles cakes out here....sigh
	Nicey replies: Hi Monika, Wow sounds like the WagonWheel has really wigged out since joining Arnotts.
Elizabeth Chow Lincoln Review	Hello Nicey, While my husband and I were shopping for fathers day presents in David Jones (a fairly upmarket department store here in Australia) we saw and bought a packet of "strawberry biscuits". They were in a cardboard packet with a big picture of strawberries on it, but no picture of the biscuits. The ingredients listed strawberry flavour, and the packet said there were four biscuits in the pack. This sounded like rather luxury level biscuits to us, and we were eager to try them. When we opened them, though, we found four (not five) Lincoln biscuits. As far as I know these aren't regularly available here in Aus, but I recognised them from your site which I'd been browsing the day before. Like you say in your review, the most exciting thing about them is the pattern of dots on the top. So what I'm wondering is, are Lincoln biscuits normally strawberry flavoured? Is strawberry flavour one of the standard Lincoln ingredients? Not that it was very noticeable in ours. Anyway, thanks for a very enjoyable website. Cheers, Liz
	Nicey replies: Liz, Whoa, these biscuits are bringing me down. First off, four is a miserably small number isn't it? Typically that's seen as the amount for a small individiually wrapped serving (sorry to use a dodgy transatlantic term), as exemplified by the Oreo or even our own Penguin MIni Splatz. However, there is usually a bunch of said servings in the box not just four biscuits in total. As for the strawberries I think there are some mixed metaphors going on here. Strawberry shortcake is a sandwich of shortcake (sort of as it's an American recipe) with fresh strawberries and cream. Fair enough. Lincoln biscuits are a shortcake biscuit, a fairly dull and unassuming one at that. They wouldn't even dream of getting a cream filling let alone fraternising with Strawberries. As for these biscuits only tasting slightly of strawberry despite there being pictures of them on the box, well that's enough to make your blood boil. I await the emails telling me about Lincoln creams, now I've said that I'm sure there was such a thing.
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