Biscuit Blog: Tesco Nice Biscuits

Tesco Nice Biscuits

This is a type of biscuit that is available from many companies, that I have not yet explored but will look out for from a range of shops in coming months.  Note that while many biscuits may be 'nice' these are 'Nice', apparently, possibly, named after the city on the French Mediterranean coast.  The fact that the Dutch equivalent are called 'Nizza' biscuits adds to that view, as the Dutch word for 'nice' is 'mooi'.

As with many biscuits available in Britain there is a shape and a patterning which you will almost always find with this biscuit.  There are no 'tractor tyre' edges as on a shortcake biscuit though there is no reason why there could not be.  There is something about how the biscuit appears, no matter what company produces it, that is important to signal to consumers what they are receiving.  Though, as I am increasingly noting on this blog, actually the tastes are more and more varying from what you might expect from that type of biscuit.

Put simply a Nice biscuit is always rectangular, pale in colour and with the word 'NICE' impressed on the top side and little indentations right around edge.  It can have a covering of sugar on the top side.  It is quite a sweet biscuit and you should find strands of coconut as you bite through it.  Some can have a soft bite to them, a lack of snap, but really they should not crumble.  These from Tesco largely have these element, they have a reasonable snap and you can sense, rather than taste the coconut in them.  The striking thing about them was that they felt very 'dry' on the tongue almost as if I was eating a cracker biscuit.  This was not expected from a Nice biscuit.  Overall aside from coconut shreds, these were almost painfully plain biscuits.  They seemed better as they matured a little in biscuit jar, but I was not getting the experience I was expecting from these biscuits.  They are not appalling but I think Tesco needs to work at the recipe.  They look perfect but something is missing, some sweetness and certainly some moistness from the coconut to make these good Nice biscuits.

Rating
*****

Biscuit Blog: Tower Gate Malted Milk

Tower Gate Malted Milk

Today I have encountered an anomaly - a biscuit that tastes like a different type of biscuit to the one it is supposed to be.  It not as extreme as if I had encountered a gingery rich tea, but it is heading in that direction.  Malted milks are one of those sub-sets of biscuits that numerous companies make and probably every supermarket and a lot of smaller stores sell.  Over time I anticipate reviewing a number of different malted milks and you can link through to them using the tags at the bottom of the posting.

For my first foray into malted milk tasting, I returned to Lidl.  I managed to lose the first packet I bought so this was my second attempt.  This is another biscuit sold under Lidl's umbrella Tower Gate brand.  The packet is striking with wavy lines in blue and white which I am not certain are supposed to remind you of milk or Friesian cows or even the cartoon character Blue Cow.  The tagline 'udderly groovy' seems to have been thrown in there for no particular reason.

This brings us to what defines a malted milk.  There are a number of characteristics that these ones fit with and others that they do not.  They must be rectangular with an image of a cow on them.  So far so good.  Above all, they must have a creamy taste and this is where the Tower Gate version falls down.  If I had been eating these blindfolded, I would have assumed I had been eating another sub-set, the Nice biscuit.  Nice biscuits are also rectangular, pale tan in colour and usually have a crusting of sugar crystals.  They have a mildly coconutty flavour and strands you find in your mouth.  These malted milks certainly lacked the creamy flavour.  They felt as if they had a sugary glaze and were as sweet as Nice biscuits even though no sugar crystals were visible.  There was more of a snap eating these than you would expect with malted milk and the flavour was like that of a Nice, but without the strands.  They were reasonably moreish which counterbalances a little me having to mark them down a bit because despite how they appear they do not actually taste like malted milk biscuits should.

Rating:
*****