Biscuit Blog: Belmont All Butter Scottish Shortbread Fingers

Belmont All Butter Scottish Shortbread Fingers

I must apologise for the photo in this posting, the light level was lower than I realised even though I have always lived in unfortunately gloomy houses.  As seems typical with Belmont, the ordinary biscuit brand from Aldi, they have gone for a lengthy title.  These went into a head-to-head with the Lidl equivalent for a taste test by two members of my house and came off slightly worse.  They crumble easily, a trait common for shortbread, but the full biscuit lacks 'bulk' when bitten, it seems too dry.  There is no visible sugar, but the butteriness that you would hope for given the title also seems absent so it comes off as very plain biscuit with only a little of creamy after taste.  The Lidl version just wins out for having better structural integrity and some more of that creamy flavour that you look for in shortbread.

Rating:
*****

Biscuit Blog: Tesco Scottish All Butter Shortbread Fingers

Tesco Scottish All Butter Shortbread Fingers

These biscuit have the longest packet name of any I have tasted so far for this blog.  I think, at present, my baseline for judging shortbread fingers are those produced by Walker's,  I tend to get them in packets of two at work.  These do not reach the level of those.  However, they are better than a number of the biscuits I have recently bought from Tesco.  They are sprinkled with sugar which used to be traditional with shortbread, but it is not ridiculously the case.  They have a decent crumble which is good for shortbread.  Some tourist brands go far too far and they are breaking up before you can even get them to your mouth and these certainly do not do that and they also do not snap which would be wrong for shortbread.  They have a hint of the butteriness that is promised, but it does not go far enough.  It is this final element which lets them down.  These are reasonable biscuits for having with coffee or tea and with a little work could be really decent shortbread biscuits.  I would cut down the sugar and raise the creaminess of the taste in order to get there.

Rating:
*****