Your ViewsKeep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions. To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin). Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com | If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay! | Your e-Mails |
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. |
| |
Alison Debenham |
Hi Nicey etc etc
My younger daughter found this site, which may be of interest to you - a little pricey for the first order, but I'm sure you're worth it, or it could be a very special present - sounds like a fun idea!
www.blendsforfriends.com
Best wishes to all
Alison |
Nicey replies: Yes bet it costs an arm and a leg, always suspicious when there isn't a sniff of a price anywhere. He would be best off just ripping open some bags of PG Tips for us and bunging them in one of his fancy little tins, then writing some stuff on the side about how we only really like PG Tips.
As sophisticated as ever
Nicey |
| |
Alison Linton
 Tregroes Toffee Waffles Review |
hello...firstly congratulations on the wonderfulness of ur informative website, it was cleared up many i dilemma for me i.e. the problem of the jaffa cake... and it is so true, sometimes you must just pause and think of cakes....
however i do have one biscuit related query which it would be fabulous if you could give me some guidance on...
i am currently living in germany and have, to drink with my specially imported british tea, bought some things called....ALL BUTTER BELGIUM WAFFLES....now...they come in a box but, being called waffles, could these be classed as a biscuits?? i wait with breath that is bated for your reply....
many thanks for your help with this matter
ali |
Nicey replies: Alison,
Given that you are having to subsist on whatever you can lay your hands on in continental europe to go with your tea it in natural that you should seek to broaden your approach to what can usefully be classed as biscuits. We reviewed a UK built version of the Belgian Waffle as one of our biscuits of the week, so perhaps this is enough of a sanctioning for your purposes.
Actually we have just got back from Wales where they are made and where surrounded by them when we visited Caerphilly Castle (they were in the gift shop not up in the battlements). |
| |
Mike Amberry |
Hello Nicey,
You must have seen it already, but just in case you haven't there's a new advert out where a team of bakers build a replica Skoda out of cake. It's a work of genius and, of course, it's **already on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwswkJZEdS4**
Might be worth a mention on the site?
Wassail,
MIKE. |
Nicey replies: Yes we enjoyed it too, I liked the bonnet, engine, lights and the most of the rest of it. For a moment I had to remind myself that this was not one of my fanciful daydreams but really was on the the telly. |
| |
|
|
|