Your Views

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Your e-Mails

Sananda Poole	Hello Nicey, One of my colleagues has just returned from the canteen with 2 organic, fair traded, vegetarian, vegan, no wheat, no soya, no hydrogenated fat, no enzymes, lemon zest cookies from Doves Farm Organic (yes, I believe they did have to include some extra packaging to fit that list in). The chap looked distinctly under whelmed by the experience. As I told him, frankly I'm not surprised as no matter how fairly traded palm oil is, it's never going to be as good as butter in the manufacture of biscuits. And that's without even considering the potential carbon footprint of transporting palm oil from wherever it grows to Hungerford.... Anyway, I shall stop getting upset about this, adopt an I'm alright Jack attitude as I dig into my 1.3kg box of broken biscuits procured from the cheapo-shop for £2 and get to the point.... I have been sent in the direction of the company website, on which I have discovered that biscuits, like water, carbon and rocks have a cycle. I have attached the diagram from the site for your perusal - I hope you find it as enlightening as I did! Kind regards, Sananda
	Nicey replies: Lovely. I'm a bit concerned that everything seems to be accumulating in the cereal bowl at the bottom. I fear we may soon be overwhelmed by 'Bio-Biz' if we leave the situation unchecked. I'm also left wondering now, where as it had never occurred to me before, if grass produces hay and wheat produces straw why don't oats produce anything?
Steve Worrall Jam Sandwich Creams Review	Without wanting to re-ignite the Jaffa Cake/Buscuit debate, I was grazing through my confection cupboard the other day and randomly selected three items to nibble on with a nice cup of tea. I switched on the telly, had a quick slurp of tea and proceeded to pick up one of my nibbles. It was with much amusement that I realised that all three items I had selected, whilst being entirely different products, were all based on the same basic fillings, to wit, raspberry jam and butter cream. The items i had chosen were (in no particular order), Fox's Jammy Dodger Mr Kiplings Viennese Whirl Morrisons Brand Butterfly Cake This set me thinking. The Jammy Dodger is definately a buscuit and the Butterfly Cake is certainly a cake, but there seems to be a grey area, a sort of transition zone, in which the Viennese Whirl sits, being a sort of hybrid Buscuit come Cake. After a period of reflection I related this to my wife, Tracy, who informed me that the Viennese Whirl was neither cake nor buscuit but a pastry and that I was stupid. Does anyone have any comments on the above? Steve Worrall
	Nicey replies: Right a great deal to get through here. First off that's a Jam Cream Sandwich which Fox's are building there, a Jammie Dodger is not only different not having cream, but is a built solely by Burtons. Its a bit like calling your Dyson Vacuum cleaner a Hoover. Sorry for the pedantic bit there but I would be remiss if I didn't wade in. Any how the Mr Kipling Viennese whirl is avery undervalued thing, and in a great many European countries would get away with calling itself what ever it fancied. Cake or biscuit they wouldn't really care. However in the UK it would have to be a cake, and not just beacuse as we all know, Mr Kipling makes exceedingly good ones, and he made these, but also because I don't think it can be classed as a pastry as it has raising in it. If it was a pastry I would probably just join a circle straight to cakes in the mighty NCOTAASD Venn Diagram of such things which is always open for a bit of a fiddling with.
Lisa Lamb Rich Tea Review	Where would those of us who feel slightly nauseous yet in need of a little comfort (childhood illness, pregnancy) etc. be without Rich Tea biscuits. They are simple, soothing, plain and comforting. I love the big round ones, even better than the oval thin ones which are a bit too similar to a marie biscuit (best with butter and hundreds and thousands) I speak up in defense of this noble, sober biscuit! Lisa
Maisie	Dear Nicey, Hope that you are well. I got married recently and for our wedding breakfast instead of the usual champagne and three course we went for cakes, scones, with and without fruit, jam and clotted cream, cakes, jam sandwiches, cakes, salmon sandwiches, cakes, wedding cake, cakes and as much tea as our guests could consume. Hoorah! It was a hit with all. However, imagine my horror when I saw my newly wedded husband loading his scone with cream and then jam! Well it was nearly the divorce courts right then. Apparently his whole family do it! Cream, being like butter. But I say, butter is like butter. Butter, jam, cream, it is the natural order of things. We decided to have a look on your delightful site to see if you have the answer. We couldn't find anything obvious but I dare say that this debate has raged in the past and as you were so helpful regarding the oat cake, cake or biscuit problem (you informed us it was actually a cracker) we wondered if you could help us here. Yours, tea drinkingly, Maisie
	Nicey replies: Actually that was the very first poll we ran on the site and it came down as 72% jam then cream 28% cream then jam. So your old man is not alone just out numbered three to one.
Anthea Marie Review	Thank you for your review on that marvelously bland biscuit we all love so much! I'm an ex-pat South African, living in the USA now, and let me tell you, the food I miss the most is ... You guessed it MARIE BISCUITS. :D Pathetic isn't it? But I really do. We used to make sandwiches out of them with butter and marmite, or just dunked them in our tea (as a kid I could eat half a packet easily!). Sometimes we drenched them with Illovo syrup, and they always tasted good crumbled up in custard and jelly! I loved nibbling off the frilly edges first before delivering the death-blow bite to the center. When I got pregnant with my son, the only thing that helped with the nausea was this innocent little biscuit and our native Rooibos tea. Maybe it was nothing but a placebo effect, but hey, it worked! :)
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