 | Some of you may have heard of this week's biscuit as it has called a mild flutter of attention to itself, by claiming to be the world's first cookie designed for dunking. Such are the lofty heights to which NCOTAASD down has risen that the people behind this obviously provocative claim sent a couple of tubs over to us to see what we thought. We naturally obliged, put the kettle on tucked in and let them know, and now we'll let you know too.
Yes merely putting those two words together 'dunking' and 'cookie' brings two largely opposing world views crashing together in the same biscuit. Add to this that the undersides are dipped in milk chocolate and the whole thing packaged in a tub. Short of walking over and spilling ones pint this biscuit is trying to grab our attention through a mixture of iconoclasm and big green and orange letters.
As we've said before and no doubt we'll say again, something that calls it self a cookie is really communicating a couple of points to us. First, appearance wise we would expect a well risen and very informal look to the biscuit, with deep fissures and lumps of something or other embedded into the dough. The biscuit should be quite voluminous as a result. Well the M&S offering certainly passes on all of these counts. Both the choc chip and double choc chip most obviously are laden with choc chips, white chocolate in the double choc. However, now we come to the points that begin to add serious weight to their claims of 'worlds first dunking cookie'.
First the texture and general demeanor of this biscuit is not that of your typical cookie. The biscuit engineers behind this have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that not only can this cookie dunk as well as classic biscuit stalwarts of the art but in many cases exceed their dunking times, even in really hot tea. They have even produced comparative statistics to back up their claims, which we won't go into here. This does mean that any body eating the biscuit dry will find it has quite a snap to it, and indeed they even managed to hold the younger members of staff at bay for some considerable time. Having said that the flavour was very nice indeed, using 15% butter and not a whiff of hydrogenated vegetable fat in sight. Perhaps the secret weapon in the ingredients is some free range egg, not something that is typical in biscuit recipes and certainly offered up from time to time as one of those rules for differentiating biscuits from cakes.
The finger shape is obviously ideal for dunking, and again a huge departure from what one would normally expect from a cookie. The chocolate on the back is another broadside assault against the non-dunking of chocolate biscuits, and every bit as provocative in my book as combination of dunking and cookies.
So what actually happens when you dunk one of these? Well, the biscuit holds up terrifically well and the chocolate depending on your tea temperature, goes from liquid goo to a glossy film. Again the chocolate is devoid of any nasty stuff so has quite a rich taste. The biscuit meanwhile transforms into its soft state, and is now entirely defenseless. Eating like this will require all your will power to stop you quickly demolishing the tub. If anything does come to your aid then it is simply the fact that they are very rich, that and they retail at quite a price, but that is to be expected given their quality ingredients and the brand.
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