Biscuit Blog: Asda Rich Tea biscuits

Asda Rich Tea biscuits

These Rich Tea biscuits, not as small as some you find and in the packet you get two sub-packs of biscuits.  They are very dry in taste and lack much of the richness that you would expect.  They almost work like cracker biscuits would in your mouth.  Thus, while good value for money, I would use them as biscuits for cheese rather than as a sweet biscuit.

Rating:
*****

Biscuit Blog: Asda Cocoa Creams

Asda Cocoa Creams

These are a sandwich biscuit.  Historically BN, the French biscuit company, produced the gold standard for these, certainly in the years before they insisted on impressing smiley faces into all of their biscuits.  Sandwich biscuits are larger than many standard biscuits and typically have a chocolate cream filling.  The biscuit discs themselves really need to be creamy to counterpoint the chocolate in the middle.  BN always did theirs in a square shape; British versions of the 21st century seem to be round.  Perhaps the easiest to access version of the sandwich biscuit in the UK at present is the Lidl Princess biscuit which I need to get around to reviewing here.  This is a comparator for it but comes out as less successful.

The biscuit is large.  The discs have an appropriate snap and then a little crumble.  However, they really lack the creaminess which is vital in a sandwich biscuit.  I do not know how some of these supermarkets - Asda is not alone in this, Tesco is also guilty - manage to get so little flavour into some of their biscuits.  The chocolate cream inside is of the correct consistency.  It should be of a milk flavoured chocolate, but I recognise that dark chocolate is the leading flavour now.  I like dark chocolate so enjoyed this cream and funnily another person eating these who insists on milk chocolate and hates dark felt it was sufficiently milky for their taste.  The problem is, with so little flavour in the biscuit disc, all you get is the cream flavour, you might as well spread chocolate paste on a slice of bread.  Unsurprisingly, as a result, they lack moreishness.  These are another of those frustrating biscuits in which the company falls short on one element and so the biscuit fails to achieve what it should be doing.  Not terrible, but could so easily be better.

Rating:
*****

Biscuit Blog: Asda Coconut Rings

Asda Coconut Rings

While I was looking at the standard biscuits Asda sells under is own brand, I also saw a few which are not provided by other supermarkets.  These coconut rings are one of those.  I have to give Asda some credit for effort as they have tried to make these distinctive.  However, hey do not crumble in the way as shown on the packet, though as you can see from the damaged biscuit on the left in the picture they are pretty fragile.  They are thin and quite small; they fortunately do not crumble as suggested and have a fair snap.

My main problem with these biscuits is the lack of 'coconutness' if there is such a word - but I imagine you get what I mean.  I would expect more sweetness coming from the coconut and those small shreds of coconut that you would find in a decent Nice biscuit.  There is some hint of coconut flavour and a rare shred, but once more we effectively seem to have a Rich Tea with a different texture and supposed flavour, but insufficiently different really to warrant you buying these as an alternative to a plain biscuit.

Rating:
*****

Biscuit Blog: Asda Garibaldi biscuits

Asda Garibaldi biscuits

I shot these particular biscuits on a board for playing the Japanese game Go.  It rather gets abused in my house, often used as the base for bathroom scales in rooms where the floor is uneven.  However, given the wide diversity of length of biscuit packets and the size of biscuits even of the same type, I am wondering if I will used it more often so that you can see from the number of squares covered the scale of what I am showing.

I had not been to Asda for a while so when in there for a reason I have now forgotten, I thought it a good idea to pick up some of their standard biscuits in order to provide more comparators for the basic biscuit types common in the UK.  I started with Asda's Garibaldis.  One positive thing about these is that they are scored well.  Unlike most biscuits, Garibaldis are sold in strips which require the eater or the person filling the biscuit tin, to break them off.  It is unfortunately too common for Garibaldis to be scored poorly or for the biscuit to be too crumbly, so that breaking them off you end up with erratically sized biscuits and often too many wasted crumbs.  As you can see from above, these break very neatly.

I do expect a glaze on the top of my Garibaldis and that was missing from these.  In fact they are rather lacking in sweetness all round.  The raisins used are not particularly sweet.  The biscuit itself has a very dry flavour.  It has an appropriate snap when you bite into it, not crumbling away too much as can be a problem with Garibaldis.  There is some degree of moreishness but it is not that strong, I think because the actual biscuit is somehow plainer than the best Rich Teas and the sweetness is really lacking.

I would be tempted to add half-a-star if I could to the rating below, because Asda has got the scoring of these Garibaldis done very well, but overall it is not an appealing biscuit.

Rating:
*****

Biscuit Blog: Hall Ginger Nuts

Hall Ginger Nuts

I bought these from Asda at the height of the ginger nut shortage earlier this year.  They were the last packet left.  I have not come across Hill as a company before, though it is clear that they are well established.  I am glad that I did try these as they are good ginger nuts.  They have a really sharp snap to them and they do not powder in the way inferior ginger nuts do.  They have a crisp flavour with a clear ginger tang to them.  I notice that they say that they have a hint of lemon in the flavour and I think that adds to the tang which is what you are looking for in ginger nuts.  My only complaint is that they are smaller than equivalent biscuits of this type.  However, they are of sufficient quality that I would buy Hall biscuits again.

Rating:

*****

Biscuit Blog: Asda Oatie Crumbles

Asda Oatie Crumbles

I seem to be in a real phase of picking biscuits which taste as if they would be better off with a different description.  I have seen oat biscuits and they are often very plain and really almost a cracker or health biscuit.  They differ from 'oatie' biscuits which in theory are a sweet version of a biscuit with oats in.  I have had some very nice versions of these in cafes and at events, though not from supermarkets.  I did hope that I would find something like that with these oatie biscuits from Asda, which, as you can see from the picture, come in a small packet.  What I got instead were digestive biscuits by a different name.

I have sampled these twice now to see if they varied from digestive biscuits at all.  I expect more of a crunch to them given the patterning but they are as yielding as a standard digestive.  There is minimal sweetness in them so that they do not taste identical to an oat biscuit, but insufficient to provide the taste of what I feel are the best oatie biscuits.  There is really no point in buying these.  If you want an oat biscuit for cheese or smoked salmon or whatever you fancy, simply buy an oat biscuit.  If you want a digestive then simply buy a digestive.  Sitting somewhere between the two leaves these biscuits in the wilderness with no clear purpose and no distinct flavour.

Rating:
*****

Biscuit Blog: Asda Malted Milk

Asda Malted Milk

As the UK biscuit shortages, especially of ginger biscuits has continued, I have had to focus on biscuits I have been able to get hold of.  One of my intentions is to compare the same type of biscuit available from a range of common British supermarkets.  Recently I have not found it difficult to find Malted Milk biscuits, so I am focusing on these at present.  Ongoing road works have made it difficult to get around my home town so it has been a challenge to reach a range of supermarkets.  However, last week I was able to get to a branch of Asda and pick up some of their versions of biscuits; in fact I got three different ones as part of a multi-buy deal, though from what I understand even those kind of deals are now likely to become extinct as they are apparently too complex for the average person.

Though these Malted Milk biscuits look the same as the Tower Gate ones I reviewed just over a week ago: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/biscuit-blog-tower-gate-malted-milk.html The taste is different.  I am sorry to say that these do not reach the creamy flavour that I have been looking for.  However, these do have the crumble rather than the snap when bitten.  They have a flavour more like a Rich Tea biscuit than a traditional Malted Milk, though with an almost wheaty texture to them.  However, they do not have that sugary glaze feel/taste of the Tower Gate version.  In terms of moreishness they are pretty sound.  However, my quest for a true Malted Milk biscuit needs to continue.

Rating:

*****

Biscuit Blog: Biscuit Shortage!

I could not continue producing my biscuit blog postings without noting that Britain is currently in a biscuit shortage.  This is the result of flooding even before  http://www.cityam.com/230293/storm-desmond-carlisle-floods-close-united-biscuits-mcvities-factory-as-army-drafted-in-and-cobra-meetng-called-to-handle-flood-fallout of a large United Biscuits factory in Carlisle.  This produces biscuits branded as McVities and Carr's.  The largest impact seems to have been on ginger biscuits which are in short supply even now, two months after the initial flooding: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35482789  This has provoked uproar on local radio stations even in southern England and on the dreadful Mumsnet which exists for indignant people.  I had noticed the shortage of ginger nuts even own brand ones in Lidl, Tesco and Asda as people deprived of the brand names have clearly switched to others and have stripped shops of them.  It does show how vulnerable we are to simply one factory going down.  I think Lidl has missed a trick, it should have shipped in more speculoos biscuits from the continent; instead they have just added more digestives where the ginger nuts used to be.  My sympathies go out to all of you unable to get your favourite biscuits but I will be holding on to my small supply of them extra carefully until the crisis is over.

P.P. 06/03/2016
The BBC has an update outlining that the biscuit shortage is likely to be coming steadily to an end over the next few weeks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-35696027

The Challenge of ONN Vacuum Cleaners

Well, this may appear to be a bizarre issue to concern myself with for the new year but it is something that has caused frustration and if I alert you to it, it may stop you falling into the same trap as I did, especially given that this is the time of year when people buy electrical goods. I had owned a small 1100 watt, 1.5 litre vacuum cleaner since 2001 when I lived in a two-bedroomed flat. When I moved into a larger house but lived alone this was sufficient. When I moved to the five-bedroomed place with more residents, the housekeeper had an identical one (though hers was grey and mine was yellow) so one was kept for upstairs and one for downstairs which seemed sufficient. However, in the course of 2007 both of these machines being at least six years old wore out. I decided to replace them with a larger single vacuum cleaner. I was hesitant to spend too much, as having seen just how many Dyson vacuum cleaners end up at my local dump thought that something a little larger than the 1100 watt one that I had bought from Tescos would suffice. I bought a 1400 watt, 4.5 litre ONN vacuum cleaner from Asda last summer.

ONN is the name for the own brand electrical goods produced by Asda. Having Asda stores in my vicinity I have gradually bought a range of things in their range including a (very noisy) electric kettle, a decent television and two DVD players, all of which have functioned well. Now, the problem with the ONN vacuum cleaner is not that it does not work, it does its job fine, it is just that it has no designation. Dyson has its DC17, DC19 and DC20 which are 1400 watt, Bissell has its 5200 FLIP IT, Vax its VZL -118AT and its VZL6012 and even its V-123 WET & DRY in this size too, Dirt Devil has the DD2430, Electrolux Z 4170A and Hoover, the 100 watts more powerful, TAV 1620 Xarion and there are many more besides, but each has a clear designation. In the ONN range you have the 'small one', 'the slightly larger one' and so on. This may be to make them sleek and mysterious but it causes an immense problem when you come to find replacement bags. I had used up the three that came with the machine and so had to hunt down replacements.

Buying vacuum cleaner bags is comparatively simple these days, there are online suppliers who deliver in twenty-four hours (if their website is working, I had to complain to one that it did not let me pay for anything in my shopping basket, I had no response and went and shopped at one of their rivals). However, if you have an ONN machine you have to guess, by looking at the pictures. Given that mine is the second size up, I guessed (wrongly) that the ONN size designated '002' by bag suppliers no doubt also frustrated by ONN's unwillingness to designate their machines. I was wrong. I went back to Asda assuming that I could get the correct bag to match my machine, but again I was wrong.

It is not an issue of not being able to get 4.5 litre bags. With no designation for my machine I have been searching by capacity and by wattage. I have bags that fit my machine perfectly, but for one thing, the piece of thick cardboard which sits at the front and holds the bag in place so that the suction can work, is of a different shape (a long vertical rectangle rather than a horizontal rectangle) to every vacuum cleaner bag I have been able to buy. I have a drawer of useless bags and have been tempted to ship my ONN to join all the Dysons (predominantly the upright ones, they bring greater colour to the dump) to the recycling yard. What I was compelled to to do was cut the thick cardboard to fit my ONN machine. It is not as easy as it appears as it is three layered thick cardboard and keeping a straight line is difficult as you strain to get your scissors to cut. Cut off too little and it will not fit in. Cut too much and the seal is not good enough and it will not suck well or simply distribute the dirt into the interior of the machine. Cut unequally from each side of the cardboard and the hole in the centre will not line up properly with the hole in the machine again reducing suction and meaning dirt does not get into the bag.

I do have a vacuum cleaner that works but it seems incredibly inefficient that I have to line up and carefully cut up bits of cardboard whenever I want to put in a new bag. Part of the problem stems for ONN not having any designations for their vacuum cleaners and part of the problem is their non-standard cardboard piece. So, if out shopping for a vacuum cleaner think about whether you, like me, about six months from now will be struggling to get a replacement bag in so that the vacuum cleaning can be done.