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Your e-Mails

Stuart Bell	I found your site today and mention of Chiltonian Biscuits but why has nobody mentioned their Swiss Cream biscuits. As a kid in the 60’s and 70’s I can remember pestering my mother to always buy these. The biscuit use to melt in your mouth, was light as a feather with a light sugar coating and pure white fondant filling. Absolutely delightful! Any other biscuit with ‘Swiss’ in the title these days cannot match these – pure heaven.
	Nicey replies: These have been mentioned before, but personally I never encountered them. It seems that Chiltonian biscuits were very special indeed, we always mention them when mourning the passing of proper Gariballdi biscuits. I shall create an entry for them in the MIA database.
Huw Wyn Busgut Tregroes Toffee Waffles Review	I have recently discovered you excellent website. I immediately went to your review of my favourite biscuit, namely the Tregoes Toffee Waffle. The plain chocolate version of this is simply the best biscuit in the world. Nothing else comes close. I am surprised that you omitted to mention this fact in your review. I would like, as a point of order, to raise the factual error that you include in your review of the Tregoes waffle. You say that “Two waffles sandwich a layer of lightly cinnamon spiced buttery toffee”. The fact of the matter is that a single waffle is carefully split down the middle following baking, and is then administered its heavenly toffee filling. Such is the genius of the Tregoes waffle. Apart from that you are not doing badly at all. Keep up the good work. Huw Wyn Busgut
	Nicey replies: You are of course right about the splitting down the middle thing, thanks for pointing that out.
Trina Fitzalan-Howard Oreo Review	Well done for standing up for biccies everywhere on the BBC website today. I couldn’t agree with you more. A British biccie has to dunk into tea. Everyone knows that. I’ve never heard of anyone dunking biscuits into their milk at work. Who drinks milk at work? Who drinks milk and dunks biscuits into it. Sounds like some sort of horrendous breakfast replacement meal thingy going on and until polite society adopts it as the norm I shall be steering well clear of such behaviour. So, the Oreo. Not a fan I have to say. The biscuit is like a cinder that should promise chocolately delight but delivers cinders and a distinct lack of chocolate flavour at that. Apparently no one in their right mind in the US has been known to nibble an Oreo. A twist-the-two-discs apart is required, lick off the cream bit and then dunk. They are very crumbly as I recall so the technique has to be nigh on perfect. Well, the cream bit is just a sugar blast. The resulting two disks of cinders are fit for nothing and a soggy Oreo is to be shunned in all but the lowest levels of society. I’m thinking dunking an old Oreo would be like dunking a Jaffa cake. When I visited friends in the US and was offered an Oreo as the high point of biccie evoluation I did smirk inwardly and knew there is something we definitely do better. My export of Hobnobs drew gasps of approval. Far from importing Oreos to us I think British companies should export our finest over there. We should be hobnobbing everywhere!
	Nicey replies: Well Oreos are obviously doing something right, given the amount they sell and the armies of Oreo clones around the globe from other manufacturers. I just think the fact UK market hasn't responded to the Oreo thus far is not because we haven't had a advert telling us how we apparently should be eating them. If anything now that we do have such a 'helpful' advert its just likely to make us more determined when passing them over. Also unless they have revised their pricing significantly then I think they are a bit out of touch there too. Recently on a visit to the Imperial War Museum I read a war time orientation leaflet issued to US servicemen who were being stationed in the UK. It was full of helpful stuff such as how we call gas petrol and bars pubs and so on. Alas it didn't have a page on cookie / biscuit orientation.
Ian	Good afternoon sir, I was recently browsing your "Missing In Action" section and came upon "Banjo" in the list. Coincidentally, a few days later I was visiting a friend in the Emsland area of Germany and chanced upon a biscuit of the same name in the local supermarket. As I remember the Banjo, it was a wafer based chocolate biscuit, a 2-fingers-in-a-pack format, and as I hope you can make out from the attached photo, the German bought Banjo does indeed adhere to this standard. I didn't ask my German friend what the German word for the English word 'Banjo' was, but I wished I had, because if I discovered it was a different word altogether, then this may have established some sort of common origin of the English and German banjo. This tribute/ counterfeit/ cousin is produced by Master Foods, (Austria 7091 BREITENBRUNN) and the chocolate covered wafer carrying a chopped hazel nut layer is delivered as 2 wafers weighing a total of 31g, and each 2 finger unit can come as part of a 5 multipack. The colouring of the wrapper is different to as I think back on the Banjo, I get an image of a blue wrapper, but I admit I could well be confusing this with the "Blue Riband/ Blue Ribbon" ("I got those can't get enough of those Blue Riband Blues, Blue Riband's the wafer biscuit I always choose. When my woman...... I am relatively new to the site and I apologise if I am covering old ground here or opening up cases which have long since been closed. Regards Ian P.S None of my Dutch mates have ever heard of the Siroop Wafel coming under a layer of chocolate (recent correspondence). I will ask a Belgian when I see one, there seem to be some regional differences in some biscuits in the Benelux countries.
	Nicey replies: Ian, I have to cast my mind back to the very early 1970's for my memories of Banjos so I would have been six or seven then. I do remember that the cross section was very square, that the wafer was very light and quite deep with not many layers and that there was a layer of caramel on top with nutty bits in. Also there were two wafers per pack. Now your German Banjos seem to match this memory in every detail, plus they are made by global food giant Masterfoods, who are well known for Twix, Mars, Maltesers, Milky Way and so on. So it seems that you have indeed found the Banjo's of old safe and well in Germany. This is very exciting news and could dictate our plans this summer as team NOCTAASD forages around on continental Europe.
j ac Dad's Cookies Review	Playbox cookies - ah they were such a favorite - weren't our tastebuds simple! sometimes I would carefully lick at the inpenetrable icing for awhile to slowly remove the design.... yes, back before video games.... Someone could make a small fortune bringing back this classic..... oh, perhaps I shouldn't have said that..... Dads cookies - I was flying from California to Toronto, Canada in 1985... five hours in the air and a lovely older lady sitting beside me to chat with. She brought out her knitting (back before knitting needles were a threat to our safety!) and shared a few "how to knit" lessons with me inflight... even letting me work on the lovely piece she was making.... and we chatted. It turned out she was the "Mom" so to speak of the "Dad" whose recipe it was for the hallowed cookie.... Me, sitting with such a celebrity... but I had to ask "The cookies just don't taste the same as they did when I was a child.. do they?". She smiled and responded "When my husband sold the recipe (in his retirement years) it gave the company full right to change the recipe in any way they wished....." and she was surprised and praised my discerning tastebuds.... That's my story - and I'm sticking to it. It was lovely to chat and share a cup of tea with you.
	Nicey replies: Thanks for sharing that brush with biscuit celebrities with us.
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