Forget tea and sympathy – it’s tea and chocolate biscuits that will get you through any crisis, keep you going until lunchtime, and make family car journeys bearable
MOLENAARTJE
I handed these round the teachers’ staffroom, carefully not mentioning that they came from the health food aisle of the supermarket. History gave a quick and efficient verdict: “Dry, tasteless.” Geography took a bite and suggested recycling the package. English summed it up with a pointed simile, likening the taste to “a crusty coaster that’s been on the bar since 1972”. The Dutch have definitely achieved a first here in producing a 46 calorie biscuit that tastes of absolutely nothing. The one advantage is that they won’t melt. Kids, just say no to biscuits from Amsterdam.
Price: €4.19 for 250g
CADBURY’S FINGERS
Maybe it stems from my father’s highly literal description of how these were made (I was four), but I’ve always been a bit worried about Cadbury’s ‘fingers’. Despite the inference, I’ve managed to bring myself to indulge in, and even appreciate, this new dark chocolate variety. The problem, of course, is that they are so delicious our testers found it impossible to stop at one. Or two. Or twelve. Light on the chocolate, it’s not until you’ve eaten half the packet that you start wondering when you last hit the gym. More moreish than Othello.
Price: €1.93 for 125g
PENGUIN
Anyone who’s been to school in the UK will recognise these as a lunchbox staple. Those pointlessly long school lunchtimes were made just that little bit more exciting by the thought of a Penguin bar. And I’m glad to see that the quintessentially British jokes printed on the back of the wrapper can still make me laugh: “Why can’t penguins fly? Because they can’t afford plane tickets.” A classic chocolate-coated biscuit that’s light on the stomach. Just P-p-pick up a Penguin!
Price: €1.93 for 9 bars
BAKANDY’S CHOCOLATE DIGESTIVES
What style! What taste! Layers of melt-in-the-mouth chocolate have been poured on with a lavish hand. And there’s crisp, crumbly, slightly gingery biscuit on the inside. At €1.77 for 9 biscuits these are perfect for munching, dunking and gobbling – just not for leaving in the sun (we ate them anyway). Far more delicious and luxurious than we expected from a local product – I’d sell half my family down the line for these.
Price: €1.77 for 200g
LU CHOCO PRINCE
Everyone at the paper raved about these. “You MUST do Choco Prince!” gasped What’s On, backed up by an enthusiastic Pandora. Apparently the whole island has grown up on these as Sunday treats and they still have that air of forbidden magic. The teachers were less forgiving: “Individually wrapped! In a tin! Does the environment count for nothing?” fumed the Geography department. I personally found them rather dry and tasteless, and although filling, they were far more biscuit than chocolate really.
Price: €3.59 for tin of 10 (250g)
CHOCO MORNING COFFEE
Cheap, cheerful and highly unimpressive – but there’s a secret to these biscuits… By themselves they taste rather dry and bland, but dip them into your cuppa and they’re suddenly melt-in-the-mouth divine. And from the product name I can only assume the same happens with coffee. There’s a thick layer of chocolate on the crisp biscuit that melts into your mug (much better than it sounds). Made by Frou Frou, this is a local product well worth trying.
Price: €1.74 for 190g
MCVITIES MINIS
The classic McVities digestive has been reinvented – and I’m just not sure it’s going to work. Each of the six packets contains about 10 mini-biscuits, the size of a 50c coin. They’re marketed as lunchbox size, but even a six-year-old anorexic would burst into floods if given these as part of a meal. You can try stuffing the lot into your mouth to satisfy the biscuit cravings (don’t try this in company – you will lose friends) but you’ll still find it as satisfying as half a rice cracker and a small boiled sweet. Like nuclear fusion, we decided that some things just aren’t meant to be messed with – and the original McVities digestives were one of them.
Price: €2.02 for 6 packets (150g)
