Your Views

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Your e-Mails

Brian Barratt	Esteemed Mr Nicey, A local bakery, called ET's for some Italian reason, has started making Eccles cakes. I'm not sure if these qualify for mention, but here goes: The texture is excellent, the fruitybit superb, but they have sugar sprinkled on the top. Shouldn't this be a cooked glaze rather than a raw scattering? Ever your 'umble, etc., Brian Barratt
	Nicey replies: Mr Barratt Bit of both I thought, although I would have expected an egg glaze to be mandatory.
Kevin Sowerby	Nicey, I’ve been following with interest the thread of the elusive chocolate garibaldi.  I can assure you that the biscuit did exist – in both plain and milk chocolate form!  Many years ago in my youth, I had a weekend job at the local Waitrose supermarket, who stocked the cherished biscuit.  This was late 70’s/early 80’s.  The brand was ‘Chiltonian’, a brand that seems to have gone into obscurity, just like the biscuit.  The plain chocolate version was my particular favourite; I always think plain chocolate and dried fruit go together well.  The biscuit always worked better if kept in the fridge, just to keep the chocolate on the firm side.  It also made separating the next biscuit from the garibaldi strip a little easier and stopped your fingers getting covered in chocolate.  I’m now living in the States, where any good biscuits are hard to come by, although the Yanks do make some acceptable fig rolls (can’t eat a whole packet of those though!).  Like my fellow expat in search of the ‘Dundee’, my electric kettle also raises some eyebrows.  It was the last one in the store and the shopkeeper still gave me a discount to take it off his hands.  It takes ages to boil using this weak American electricity but it still makes nice cup of tea, with a British tea bag of course.  They don’t know what they’re missing! Keep up the good work, Kevin
Lynn Pettersen Lu Mikado Review	Interesting to hear from Pete Moody about Pocky.  Our friends brought some all the way home from Hong Kong for us to try out, not bad we thought, but we won't get any more until they go out there again.  Then one day, sheltering from the rain on the way to Asda, I nipped into our little Chinese supermarket in Peterborough and there they were!  Chocolate and strawberry varieties, and a savoury type as well.  The strawberry ones smell like strawberry, but taste like those little white chocolate mice and leave a fuzzy coating on your tongue.  Having said that, I prefer them to the chocolate ones. My current biscuit craze came back with me from a visit to Holland - stroopwaffeln or syrup waffles - two thin crispy biscuits with a layer of toffee syrup between.  They are hard and chewy at room temperature, but balance them over a hot cup of tea for 10-20 seconds and behold - soft and gloopy on the inside and still crunchy on the outside.   When I finished the packet I brought home, I thought again that there would be no more until my next visit.  Then again Peterborough does the business!  We've had a continental street market, complete with a lovely Dutch lady selling syrup waffles. People may say uncomplimentary things about Peterborough, but we seem to have an international biscuit trade here - I'm off to see what else I can find!
Jim Boff	I recently visited the French resort of Nice and was shocked to find that the liberator of Italy - Garibaldi - was born there. One town associated with two biscuits - is this a record. Also - Nice biscuits are generally nasty - is this the same attitude to naming that means that any country with the word "Democratic" in its name is not? Similarly, Fig Rolls don't (roll) and neither do Jammy Dodgers (dodge).  How many other misleading biscuits are there? Should something be done to prevent confusion?
Karen	Nicey,   After hearing about nicecupofteaandasitdown a long time ago (through Good Food magazine no less!), I've finally got round to having a look. How clever you are to make a site for the most important tradition of them all. Nothing can beat a good cuppa and a proper biscuit or four (the more buttery the better, as far as I'm concerned).   But, I have a problem......   Being a twenty-something and keen to stay looking beautiful for many a year to come I am only too aware of the huge number of calories in a proper biscuit. What are your views on these 'low fat' biscuits, the 'Go Aheads' of this world?   I can't imagine for a minute that you like them, but what's a girl to do??   Roonie.(a Fox's fan)
	Nicey replies: Well low fat biscuits are a very tricky area, a bit like low alcohol drinks. Biscuits by their very nature have lots of carbohydrates and fat, mess with this basic equation and somethings not right. There are two main approaches, subterfuge and avoid total substitution. Foxs 'Officially Low Fat' cookies use clever recipes to avoid the fat content, small amounts of glycerol are used to keep the biscuit soft, a bit like its use in icing. Strong flavours such as almond and cherry try to steer our taste buds away from the lack of fat. The result through subterfuge is slightly odd but very very low fat cookie. The second approach seen in much of the McV GoAhead range is to bulk up the biscuit with something that is low fat like fruit. Now, I happen to like that, but you may not. Sometimes products are of course bulked up with low fat air, so watch out for those. Interestingly another reason why the Jaffa Cake is a cake and not a biscuit is that is sponge base is much lower fat in than its biscuit shelf mates, and combined with plain chocolate the fat content is impressively low.
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