Your Views

Keep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions.

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Your e-Mails

Katie Drummond	I sent your fruit cake recipe to my dad, who is a great fan of making and more importantly eating fruit cakes, and he sent the following reply: “Fascinating website and interesting recipe but is Nicey a fraud or, perhaps, a fruitcake? A true fruitcake disciple would know that June is the wrong season for a Focus on Fruitcakes; they can mature in the summer but they should be eaten only in Autumn and Winter.”
	Nicey replies: Hi Katie, I hope you can explain the mitigating circumstances of requiring propellent for our mission, and given the forecast for next week I don't think it will seem that June like.
Steve Greenslade	Hi, I spotted that you had a page all about Mince Pies. I am a huge fan of Mince Pies and have started a site all about Mince Pies. At work I have organised a group of folks to undertake testing of Mince Pies and score them. So I've published the results in a site mincepieclub. This year we tested over 20 different pies! Hope that your readers will find this interesting? Kind regards Steve
	Nicey replies: Hoorah! for your Mince Pie site, its excellently comprehensive isn't it? There seems to be a lot of research into which ones are best, who can eat the most and when they appear in the shops. The lady who ate 46 of them in Wooky Hole looks like trouble. Also pleased to see that our findings seem to broadly tally with your panel of experts.
Alison Debenham	Dear Nicey and other fellow cake bakers I can't wait to try your lovely cake recipe, but in the meantime, can I save you some time and effort? My cake baking has been revolutionised by these wonderful cake tin liners - they take away the annoying time-wasting greasing and lining part of the procedure; and they also make the cakes look very professional and save on washing up! (there are other shapes available, such as for tea loaves and muffins/small cakes) I'm sure you already know about Lakeland, but they're an excellent source of all things home-baking, preserving, tea-making, etc. Best of luck with the cycle ride; I hope the weather's kind (we don't want the wind and/or rain extinguishing the flame from your stove mid-tea preparation, do we?) I look forward to your report of the expotition (as a certain small, rotund Bear who liked hunny used to call it) Best wishes Alison
	Nicey replies: Yes I have pondered over those on the odd occasion we find ourselves in the Lakeland in town. As for the weather, the stove will be fine, I too will also be fine as I have invested in a lovely big yellow cycling cape as worn by the Dutch, and I am led to believe by Wifey, disowned husbands.
Veronica Godfrey Caxton Pink'n'Whites Review	My mother used to make a lovely cake using big round wafer biscuits (Oblaten) sandwiched together with hazelnut chocolate cream, and covered with caramel. It was only about 1 1/2" high, but was it good! She had to stop making this when the local Polish delicatessen closed down and Oblaten disappeared with it. This is the best use I know of wafer biscuits except for the good old ice cream wafer that inevitably squidges out of the sides all round and drips on your blouse. Best wishes Veronica Godfrey PS I would defend pink wafers to my last breath, and any other colour for that matter. However, Pink and Whites are another matter. Cardboard filled with foam rubber, and completely tasteless. I quite like the jam ones because of the jam, though.
	Nicey replies: Good for you sticking up for all those poor little Pink Wafers.
Ruth Civil Café Noir Review	Dear Nicey, I stumbled across your web site whilst googling for "Fox's Chocolate Creations" and was immediately hooked. As a Brit who has been living in that biscuit wasteland known as Canada for the last 10 years I have to admit that it made me feel quite homesick. I wonder if you could help me identify a biscuit that I remember from my early childhood which has almost certainly been discontinued now. During the late 60s/early 70s I looked forward to visits to my Grandparents' house where the class of biscuit was always a cut above that served up in our own household. Cafe Noir was often on offer, but there was also another biscuit (most probably made by the same company as Cafe Noir). It was an rectangular iced biscuit, but the interesting aspect of it was that the icing on the top was in 3 different coloured stripes (one pink, one pale yellow and one brown). An odd combination of colours you may think, and indeed, it was an odd combination of flavours too. The brown icing was definitely coffee flavoured and I imagine the pink was strawberry (though I can't remember for sure). The pale yellow icing must have been lemon I guess, since I don't remember it being anything as exotic as banana or pineapple. As the coffee flavour was my favourite, (Yes - I am one of those strange people who always ate the coffee creams out of the boxes of Milk Tray first) I always consumed the biscuit by nibbling along it's length and getting rid of the pink icing first, then the yellow, until I was left with a long thin strip that just had the coffee icing on it. Yum! Anyway, I would be most appreciative if you, or some of your readers could jog my memory for me and remind me what this biscuit was called. On the subject of other biscuits that have probably been discontinued, another childhood favourite was sports biscuits. These had a stick figure embossed on them in some sporting stance, often the stick figure was holding a ball or a golf club or some other piece of sporting equipment. Am I imagining it or do I also recall an iced version called iced sports? The stick figure bore a strong resemblance to those on some of the playbox biscuits. So perhaps they were made by the same company. Ta Muchly, Ruth
	Nicey replies: Hello Ruth, Our next door neighbour is Canadian, and feels he is living in an Ice Hockey wasteland, so may be that goes some way to restoring balance in the universe. Anyhow many many iced biscuits have fallen by the way side and are perhaps the Sauropods of the paleolithic biscuit world. I say perhaps as the existence of the Cafe Noir however a specialised a beast it may be would need us to have a Brontosaurus or Diplodocus knocking about some place (maybe the Congo) Anyhow back to my point, there used to loads of them and they were all fairly similar and now they all gone. Titans of a bye gone age, now just the Party Ring and Cafe Noir grace our supermarket shelves. However the Sports biscuit is very much still alive and kicking although it has suffered terribly in that all its little sports people are no longer proper stickmen and have plumped up to at least sausage men. Foxs who you mentioned at the start of you mail make them and used to make them too for M&S, which is where you may have seen some iced ones. I spoke to a nice lady at Foxs just before the stick men were put out to pasture who said that they were up to something with their Sports biscuits but wouldn't elaborate. I think she knew we wouldn't be impressed. Playbox biscuits were made by Peek Frean, and I would instinctively attribute many bygone Iced biscuits to Peek Frean and Huntly and Palmers, although this is pure guess work.
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