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Your e-Mails

Hiromi Miura Japanese McVities Digestives Review	Dear Nicey,Wifey and YMOS Some Mcvitie's biscuits seemed to decide to spend summer season in an ice-cold place in Japan! The other day, I found some Mcvitie's biscuits being in an ice-cream case ay my local "Queen's Isetan" supermarket. How wise they are! They must see that summer in Japan is humid and hot, well. Therefore, I suppose that some Mcvitie's' determined to move into such a paradise, away from the usual biscuit shelf. Inside the red box, you can see six ice-cream sandwich biscuits individually wrapped. If you rule that the side of "Mcvitie's stamp" is its face, you might see six pairs of biscuits taking a peaceful snooze, cooling their oven-baked biscuit backs on/under the chocolate ice. The chocolate-flavoured ice-cream is smooth and rich. However, the Mcvitie's biscuit looks like losing their original crunchy texture of plain Digestive biscuits on/under the ice-cream. They are soft, moist and soggy. But it is enjoyable for me to eat such loose Mcvitie's biscuits once in a while in hot summer. The ice-cream Mcvitie's is approximately 5.8cm in diameter. Thank you for reading. Sincerely, Hiromi Miura (Tokyo,Japan)
	Nicey replies: Hiromi, Yet another exotic Japanese Digestive. I wonder if chocolate digestives would fair better? The layer of chocolate might help stop them going soggy?
Jon Dance Dip It Review	Dear Nicey In the absence of my fellow master baker, Ian, I thought I would help your readers out in their quest to dip it! The new dunker can be found at the following ASDA stores - assuming they haven’t already sold out in a mad Delia-esque rush. BLYTH CARDIFF CASTLEPOINT COVENTRY DAGENHAM DERBY DONCASTER EASTBOURNE EASTLEIGH EDINBURGH ELLESMERE PORT (NEW) FARNBOROUGH GLOUCESTER GOSFORTH GOVAN HARLOW HAVANT LIVINGSTON (NEW) LONGWELL GREEN MILTON KEYNES (NEW) OLDBURY PENTWYN QUESLET (NEW) ROBROYSTON ROMFORD SHEFFIELD (NEW) SINFIN (NEW), GB TUNSTALL, GB WALLINGTON WATFORD WEST BRIDGFORD YEOVIL Kind regards Jon
Captain Vegetable	Dear Nicey, Noticed on my last stroll through my local Morrisons supermarket that you can now buy one of these ready mix kits to make your own Jaffa Cakes. Opinions please; a step too far? May all your crumbs be small ones Captain Vegetable
	Nicey replies: They are just trying to cash in on the burgeoning Snack Pimping scene what ever that is, we expect.
Robb Green Vimto and Vanilla Thriller Jammie Dodgers Review	Dear Nicey and Wifey I was relaxing at home with my wife last night when she suddenly remembered a rather exciting biscuit purchase she'd made before. She'd been looking for plain chocolate digestives in Asda, she said, when she found some limited edition jammy dodgers which purported to include not only the standard jam but also custard. Intrigued, I went into the kitchen and retrieved the biscuits. Unfortunately, the experience was far from magical. I wasn't expecting anything remotely resembling real custard, but hoped for at least a rhubarb-and-custard style dichotomy between the biscuit layers. It wasn't to be, though - the custard was stretchy and sticky like the jam, and tasted the same as well, leading me to believe that these weren't in fact jammy dodgers containing custard, merely jammy dodgers in which half of the jam had been artificially manipulated to look like custard. Aside from this, the usual jammy dodger setbacks remained. The horizontal packaging style always leaves the jam/custard from the biscuits in the top layer stuck to the wrapper and unsalvageable. Why do they do this? I suspect it's to make the packet of biscuits seem larger - if they were stacked vertically in the normal fashion they'd never get away with only giving you twelve in the packet. Also the extreme stickiness of the filling prevented any meaningful enjoyment being extracted from separating the biscuits - they simply crumbled in my hands. I know this isn't really feedback of the variety people normally send into you, I just thought it was important that you were made aware of this gimmicky, facile biscuit. I was going to send some in to you so you could test out their custard-ness for yourselves, but unfortunately I'd eaten all of them by the time I'd made up my mind. My wife wasn't too happy about that either. Yours sincerely Robb Green Bristol
	Nicey replies: Yes they sound almost identical to the Vanilla Thriller Jammie Dodgers we reviewed a while back. Definitely one of those occasions when something sounds much better on paper. I think Jammie Dodgers are only ever going to be two biscuits connected with a squirt of jammie glue. Much as we can imagine them morphing into a new higher form that has a layer of something else in there its never going to happen. I'm glad you raised the rhubarb and custard point. Nanny Nicey has always said there should be a Rhubarb and Custard cream biscuit. Indeed a couple of years ago I was invited into the Sainsbury's mothership to talk about ideas for new biscuits and suggested this. It was very well received and they even got Fox's involved who did some brainstorming around the idea, with various classic British Puddings interpreted through the medium of biscuits being suggested, but it never proceeded further. It would be a terrific biscuit though.
Keith O'Kane	Dear Nicey and the Wife, In the interest of experimentation, I baked a fruit cake at the weekend to the full NCOTAASD specification and brought it to work to have at elevenses with a block of Wensleydale cheese. The idea was to introduce the non Yorkshire members of staff (myself included) to the alleged practice of eating fruitcake with cheese. The Yorkshire member of staff was disappointed that the cake provided was not Simnel cake, but having been assured that the cheese was indeed Wensleydale, he quickly relented and tucked in. The initial reaction was that the cake was a bit on the dry side. This was probably due to my temperamental oven cooking at a higher temperature than that indicated by the dial. This will be rectified on my next attempt. Apart from the dryness of the cake, the consensus was that the cheese added very little (except in calorific terms) to the cake eating experience as the mild flavour of the Wensleydale was completely overpowered by the fruit. I am intending to try again with a moister cake and a white Stilton, but I don’t really see the practice catching on.
	Nicey replies: Keith, Thanks for taking up the challenge on this one. Sorry to hear your cake was a bit dry, it will change its texture with keeping which is why we always leave ours a week in the tin before we tuck in. So it will probably improve a good bit by the weekend. Also as you say ovens can be very tricky. Our gas oven changes it behaviour depending on what its in it and how the heat circulates. If I have two things on two shelves then we are into the realms of needing super-computing models like those used to forecast the weather to predict what will happen. I think in our first few dabblings with fruit cake we would sometimes over do it a bit so it does come down to a bit of trail and error to get them just right. I'm now struggling with the fact that I now seem to aspire to owning an oven thermometer. This seems a bit Heston Blumenthal-esk, and therefore counter to the free spirited and artisanal nature of baking. I can see both sides of the argument so really need to work this one through a bit more.
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