Sorority House Taste Test- Parts One & Two

The results are in! After Traveling For Biscuits to England recently, and tasting the above sampling that was so generously provided by the Commissar and Convenor of EWRB at our temporary place of residence, the Sorority House, a new understanding of British, make that European cookies has been achieved. The selections shown in the image above were swirled, chewed, swallowed and contemplated in order to ascertain a clear winner. There were heated discussions about the findings. Stay tuned for the details as to what was said about which by the participants.

Serious about biscuits

It begins. The official tasting by a few of the Meet At Malvern crew that is. First up is Jaffa Cakes, said to be a favorite of The Head Honcho himself. It might be that HH has entirely different sorts of taste buds than the test subjects for here is what they had to say:

Y-Sickly sweet gunge (unsure of the spelling on this word, but phoentically correct.)

G-Atrocious, rubbery, like stale twinkies. Wrong, similar to toe jam. This removes the excuse of staleness as the problem with a previous taste taste done in the US.

E-Overwhelmingly sweet

Uh oh. Looks like the panel is not amused by these biscuits. Let us try another round, this time Dark Chocolate Hobnobs by McVities:

Y-Sawdust With chocolate

G-No taste after chocolate

E-Couldn’t find the taste, searching for taste (she is so cute!)

The Orange. Frances Garrison

Message From The Commissar:

Please remember that all of the above taste test participants are FOREIGN.

It is a well documented fact that FOREIGN people have seriously DEGRADED taste buds and therefore cannot be trusted.

Everybody knows that Jaffa Cakes are beyond reproach and perform a vital role in the co-alition government. The Foreign Secretary, for example, is a Jaffa Cake (cunningly disguised as William Hague).

I am prepared to allow this sort of dissension once: but only once. Any more of this sort of stuff and I will have to bring in the censors.

Jaffa Cakes and Funerals

The incomparable Liz Smith in The Royle Family. This may be a bit confuddling to viewers of a transatlantic persuasion.

Party rings and other things

If you’re within a million miles of the twitterverse, you’ll know that I moved house recently.  My experience of this was precisely as you would expect: full of ups and downs (mostly downs) and boxes and hunky kiwi mover men and not knowing where anything is etc etc YAWN…

We’ve moved into a real live proper house, with a front door and a ground floor and a GARDEN, and it took a lot to achieve this.  From the very beginning our vendors were what you might describe as ‘tricky’.  The story was convoluted and confused (coming, as it did, through estate agents) but the general consensus was that the house was being sold by a brother and sister, who were selling up after the death of their father.  The house had been in the same family for over 30 years and they were finding it hard to let go, to the extent that asking price offers were being accepted and then refused…this had been going on for months, and even the estate agents were exasperated.

When we offered on the house, it soon became clear that we had a rival with deep pockets.  She bid against us and we were asked to counter-offer.  I refused to make any counter-offer until I had met the vendors and amazingly, they agreed to have us round, so we trundled in, Me, the Husband, the baby and the Dog….we sat on the floor (there was no furniture) and explained that we had no counter-offer, that all we could do was look them in the eyes and ask them please to choose us…..and you know what?…they did.

It was in this spirit (it’s MEANT TO BE!) that we moved in a few weeks back, to find everything absolutely pristine…totally and utterly devoid of any human sign..they had cleared everything expertly.  My mother, expertly, found the kettle, and put it on, and we all sat down for an instant.  Suddenly, and without warning, I found myself drawn to a particular cupboard…and t’was there I found the biscuits.

Oh the JOY…if you could only have BEEN there dear reader!  There were three tins in total, obviously categorised.  The first was filled with what we might call ‘plain biscuits’ – rich tea and gingernuts mainly…then the second, with oaty things like hobnobs, and plain-but-rich yummies like custard creams…then finally, the sugar-rich, chocolate and candy-coated tin with things like penguins and jaffa cakes.  Here I found the prize of prizes…a biscuit I had never seen before…THE PARTY RING.

When I first saw it, I thought ‘okay, so it looks cool, but it probably tastes foul, so I emptied out the contents of the packet made them part of my ‘feel-at-home’ dresser to counteract the hideousness of the magnolia-covered house we had just moved into.  They stayed there, looking pretty, but untouched for three days, before hunger took over, and we began to eat the party rings.  They were undeniably yummy – crunchy and sweet and more-ish.  I began to resent my parents for never having exposed me to such deliciousness (whilst simultaneously whisking them away from my 9 month-old baby)..and they were finished far too soon (mostly by the husband).  Party rings are part of my weekly shop now.  I have found them at the  co-op, but sadly not at Ocado (bloody snobs).

That’s not all…..ten days after we moved in, there was a knock at the door.  It was the previous owner, coming to collect her ‘mail’.  The poor girl would not set foot over the threshold…she explained how hard it was for her to come back and I, desperately keen to make her feel better, told her how incredibly heart-warming it was for us to have found the biscuits she so kindly left for us on moving day.  She bristled slightly, and said that she had never meant to leave the biscuits…that she had got to her new house only to discover the LACK of fabulous biscuitry and had a funny turn as a result.  I offered to give her back the tins, but she declined…I think it might have been the lack of party rings what did it.

Sorry vendors, but your party rings gave us great joy…if you need more, then just jolly well call us and we’ll be happy to supply them! – I can’t understand how my mother managed to hide party rings from us when we were little – very bloody craftily I think! – but I’m here today to champion them as my lost childhood emblems and as something that everyone should try again, even if only to decorate their table.

by Laetitia Maklouf

The future’s bright, the future’s oblong

Round is (apparently) wrong

Big thanks to Zoe for letting us know

Around The World In 80 Biscuits (Part One)

The fact remains; the UK has the best and greatest variety of biscuits in the entire world. Possibly the entire universe too.

As UK citizens, we often find the need to head off and visit other countries, tour gardens, and occasionally even experience other cultures. For the biscuit-dependent, a visit to Europe is perhaps the most tolerable. There are usually some chocolate-covered wafers or thin almond biscuits that means that one can survive for several days, after the emergency case of Jaffa Cakes has run out.

One of the famous biscuit landmarks of the world was appropriately named several centuries ago. Charles I was one of the great biscuit lovers in history, and after hearing of various biscuit flavourings in the Far East, was keen to encourage trade along the spice route. Ship after ship was sent around the coasts of France, Spain and Portugal, laden with assorted biscuits. Although many of these were flavourless, trade was apparently brisk among the starving spice merchants. The precious cargoes of biscuit flavourings, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger to name a few, were returned home to waiting bakers in England.

One of these outbound ships was involved in a tragic accident one dark, stormy night. The ship lost its way off the West coast of France, and was wrecked after sailing into some jagged rocks. Devastatingly the biscuit cargo was lost. Most of the mariners lost their lives too. But the lost biscuits will always be remembered, as the famous biscuit landmark was dubbed, the “Bay of Biscay” (the old English word for biscuit).

To be continued…….

Robert Stacewicz