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 |
Sara Tumalty
Fig Roll Review |
Dear Nicey
I appeared today on Jason manfords show for the dunk off challenge with my gingernut. Which I know is a biscuit. However, Rob came along with his Fig Roll – and won. Please do not think that I am a poor looser. I have been looking into The Fig Roll and it would seem, that, it is pastry and not biscuit, the tester being that when a biscuit goes off it goes soft and a pastry goes hard and like Jaffa Cakes they are cake and not biscuit as the pastry goes off and goes hard as do fig biscuits.
I would like to know your opinion on this and I’m sure Jason will raise it with you tomorrow when you are on the show.
Thanks
Sara |
Nicey replies: Sara,
Right first off I'm not sure what the biscuits are being subjected to, but if its just a straight forward see how long they can be dunked for then that's fairly meaningless. I can think of a two biscuits that could be immersed in boiling hot tea and shrug it off as if it had never happened, but I'll keep that to myself until I've been on the show.
As for the stale thing we have to debunk that on a regular basis, as it is riddled with exceptions. Indeed the preceding message I've just posted about the Irish Kimberley shows that they have to go stale rendering them hard before non Irish people trust them. It won't do to be sniping at the Fig Roll and trying to make out that it's not a biscuit but is a cake that somehow took a wrong turn and ended up in a biscuit packet. It's actually the filling of the fig roll that gives it a resilience against the hot tea rather than its pastry outer. Feel free to debate the nature of the Fig Roll at length but be aware that French have one that starts off crunchy and goes soft when stale, which we covered in our FigFest.
As for ginger nuts I think that was a good plan, If you had gone in with a Griffins one from New Zealand you might have won. |
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Jack Briggs |
Hi Biscuit Noshers,
I'm delighted to have found your website, whilst searching for Peek Freans. I was trying to track down a local supplier of their digestives as I remember really liking them. I think that many of the current ones that I buy seem to lack something (Co-op own brand and might be Foxes). The Peek Freans ones are a bit better cooked and more brittle but with a lovely flavour. I recall that their dunkability is a bit limited as they are inclined to break up quickly in a mug of tea.
After my local Co-op, I usually buy my biscuits from a wonderful stall in Huddersfield's Market Hall. They have (nearly) every kind of biscuit and cheap too. You can also buy big bags of broken biscuits for something like 50p a bag. My yardstick for price is the fig roll and they sell them for just over £1 per pound weight - very good value compared to packeted ones. So, you see, biscuits don't always arrive in packets. The best value is where they bag them up by weight.
By the way, I always drink Tetley's tea from the various pound shops in Huddersfield (100bags for £1). A good brew. That means you could live on tea and biscuits for a week for just £2 (plus a bit of milk). If I fancy an exceptionally good mashing of tea, I'll get some 'Yorkshire Tea'. Dear but very good.
Keep up the good work. You are kindred spirits to me.
I'll bet that you are the non-political wing of the BCCCA. |
Nicey replies: Hello Jack,
First congrats of your website I think its lovely, I particularly liked the snickets and ginnels. I'm left wondering what use I should make of this detailed information, I feel like I have had one those intelligence briefings that operatives get before going into the field. It seems as shame not to capitalise on the fact that I now know you can get from the chemists to the bus shelter via a little path. The bridges were terrific too.
Anyhow, Peek Freans as a manufacturing company hasn't existed for years (about 20). After many take overs and mergers its brands and products passed to Jacobs who still used to bake the odd thing and label it as Peek Freans, mostly selection tins. Now Jacobs in the UK has passed to United Biscuits, (McVities/Crawfords) and we all know how many Digestives they make. Jacob's in Ireland were bought by the Fruitfeild group and still bake biscuits in Dublin. There is some cross supply between the two Jacobs for obvious reasons of economy, so some products in Ireland are baked in the UK and visa-versa. There is also a Peek Freans in Canada although I haven't been able to establish its precise connection to the original London based company set up in the 19th century. It seems logical that this was an offshoot that has gone its own way, and many of its products seem like very traditional lines indicating a branching from the parent company many years ago.
Fig rolls by the pound, wonderful.
No we are nothing to do with the BCCCA but we did pop round for a cup of tea once as we were passing by and thought we would go in and say hello. |
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Gareth Brydon
Fig Roll Review |
I might be wrong but they seemed to be completely imperishable; their disdain for bacteria of all descriptions made them a winner in the household structured around a limited economy. I take the point about the space programme but wonder if their impenetrable brilliance didn’t lend itself to a robust war time ration pack.
Dipping them in tea had very little impact but softened them by a miniscule degree that proved to be of wondrous benefit to fig roll lovers with false teeth
My Nana used to buy them in bulk and treated them almost as if they were the biscuit equivalent of gold. I personally would rather have tried to eat solid gold; there was something musty about them that seemed to capture them in a time before vast biscuit choice led to the evolution of the average palate.
I respect them but could never digest them but long may they run
Gareth B’
Hereford |
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