Arrowroot

The Arrowroot

Name: Arrowroot

Manufacturer: McVitie’s

Price: £1.50

Packet weight: 200g

Summary: A biscuit of a misnomer

Dunkability: Reasonable

Allergy advice: May contain nuts, but probably no arrows or roots

Review

In the long run-up to our official Third Official Blog, we’ve

Following a week-long biscuit blitz to celebrate National Biscuit Day, which we noted solemnly on 29th May before descending into seven days of biscuit-based bedlam, we’ve decided to take a step back and enjoy a more sedate side of the biscuiting world, the humble Arrowroot biscuit.

An even-more-humble cousin of the already-quite-humble-enough Rich Tea biscuit, and derived from roots taken from the arrow tree, the Arrowroot has good form, appropriately thin with a nice breakage when being bitten into, snapped, or dashed against a wall in a disappointed fit of rage.

Any fits or rage are dependent upon your intake, as the main attribute is its ability to absorb the grinding action as you wear it down, and channeling it back in boring glory (also known as blory). Like realising that the reflection mimicking you in the mirror has taken a demonic existence of its own, and in truth you now mimic it, as you eat it, this biscuit wears you down in turn.

Official recommended consecutive intake, as such, is a maximum of three biscuits in any 30-minute biscuit eating session.

The decoration of the biscuit is a good source of review content. Adorned with thematic arrows, and a lovingly-developed typeface, there is a strong resemblance to attractive doilies. This makes the Arrowroot a prime candidate for a situational comedy sketch regarding a hilarious mix-up between the biscuit and ubiquitous ornamental mat.

This biscuit is truly designed with those who find the Rich Tea too exhilarating in mind. Less sweet, more dry, and with an endless supply of talking points for those interesting social events, it’s best experienced once, inexplicably twice, and then forgotten about for several weeks of procrastination.

Garibaldi Part 2

Overview

The Garibaldi

Name: Garibaldi

Manufacturer: Morrisons

Price: £1.00

Packet weight: 200g

Summary: Understated but unrevolutionary

Dunkability: Don’t bother.

Allergy advice: May contain nuts

Review

I am sure that our loyal readers will have come to today’s post in the expectation that we will have moved on from the Garibaldi to a new, and more exciting, biscuit.

Unfortunately, it is not to be. As mentioned in the previous blog post, we were advised (wrongly as you will see) that the Tesco Garibaldi biscuit was not typical of its kind. Consequently, we have sourced another version, this time from the inestimable Morrisons supermarket, and we present out findings in today’s post.

Our initial impression was that the Morrison’s Garibaldi biscuit is almost exactly the same as the Tesco variety: in taste, consistency, texture, quality of ingredients and raisin distribution. It also suffers from the same “imperfect breakage” problem.

However, on closer examination, we found some subtle differences. The Morrisons biscuit had a glaze that was less prominent, more subdued but more consistent that the Tesco version. It was also more brittle when broken by hand (it snapped but did not tear), but less brittle when bitten.

However, the return to the Garibaldi was a worthwhile exercise as it helped to crystallise the impressions we had on our initial encounter. Our first contact had an element of novelty: after all, the Garibaldi experience was new to us. Our second encounter lacked this novelty and the nature of the biscuit was laid bare: it is boring and disappointing.

In future, when perusing the biscuit aisle at the local supermarket, I will spot the Garibaldi section, shake my head ruefully, and pass on to the rest of the display.

That is not to say that this biscuit is not without a place in the biscuit pantheon. Certainly, if you are planning a revolution in Italy, supplying these biscuits to your followers will incite the will to action as a reaction against their dullness. And if you are planning a walk, the low sugar content and fruit filling is a good way to provide the energy you need. But if you want a tasty biscuit to enjoy with your tea, then look elsewhere.

The best description of the Garibaldi came from a friend, who, also new to the biscuit, described it as “cardboard with raisins”, thus perfectly catching the essence of the biscuit better than all the other words in this blog.

Maybe one day we will return to the Garibaldi, but now we must press on to investigate the other stars in the biscuit firmament, like some modern day Star Trek, with our five year mission to explore strange new biscuits, to seek out new biscuits and new biscuit-like confections – to boldly go where no one has gone before!

The Garibaldi

Overview

Name: Garibaldi

Manufacturer: Tesco

Price: £0.85

Packet weight: 200g

Summary: Understated but unrevolutionary

Dunkability: Don’t bother.

Allergy advice: May contain nuts

History of the biscuit

History is inherently boring, but the history of this biscuit means that although we can not talk about it, we’re going to say that we can’t not.

We can’t not talk about the boring history of this biscuit.

This biscuit’s origins lie in the story of the revolutionary Michael Garibaldi, who unified the Italian peninsula in 18?? CE after his successful biscuit-designing revolution.

Following a long campaign, in which Garibaldi ingeniously used ordinary, delicious vinegar to dissolve the mountains blocking his path, the cooks of his assembled armies reported that depleted vinegar reserves meant that the army could no longer be sustained by traditional meals of fish and chips. They were also running dangerously low on curry sauce. With soldiers on the verge of mutiny – wholly devoted to his martial brilliance but also peckish – the general sat on the banks of the river Rubicon to devise something superior even to fish and chips before crossing the river.

Unfortunately, he produced the Garibaldi biscuit.

History doesn’t record whether he succeeded in unifying the nation of Italy once he achieved the goal of inventing the eponymous biscuit.

Review

In life, it is true that biscuits are commonly not wholly biscuits, and the Garibaldi sits neatly on the biscuit-cracker dividing line. A divide unfortunately not honoured by the biscuit production values, with the individual biscuits coming in sheets of six, connected by flawed breakage fault-lines. This often results in random biscuit sizes and ugly, potentially dangerous jagged edges if the biscuit snapper is distracted or imprecise during pre-eating biscuit preparation.

The irregularity of the biscuit size is matched by an inconsistent surface glaze throughout the pack, and variable raisin distribution ranging from quite a lot of raisins to not very many raisins per cubic inch.

Imperfect breakage and inconsistent sheen

Although the soft biscuit itself is largely tasteless, each bite taken provides a variable amount of delicious raisins, and the combination of the crumbly texture with fruit chewiness gives the sense that this is first and foremost a raisin delivery vehicle in the guise of a biscuit-cracker combo.

However, the simplicity of this biscuit stands in stark contrast to many others available today. In this adrenaline-filled modern capitalist system, consumption is driven by excess, and ostentatious new biscuits adorn our supermarket shelves, demanding that we overindulge.

Not so with this humble treat, and in the relief from the general biscuit surfeit, the unassuming Garibaldi allows us to fully satiate ourselves, gorging on its raisiny goodness until we can gorge no more.

For dunking purposes, the otherwise tasteless biscuit upon dunking becomes infused with the taste of its dunked medium, giving a sensation of eating a dense cup of tea filled with raisins. While eating a cup of tea may sound appealing, in this case it was unusual and unpleasant.

Conclusion

The Garibaldi biscuit is a reasonable addition to any biscuit eater’s biscuit line-up. Unfortunately, we have been informed the version we sampled were both not good quality, and not even ordinary Garibaldi biscuits. Making this review completely pointless.

Look out for our future review, actually Garibaldi biscuits.

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Beginning a Biscuit Blog

Welcome to Biscuits and Bobs, your new guide to biscuits old and new (mainly old because new biscuits are rubbish), interesting and boring (not boring unless they’re Rich Tea), tasty and tastier (because we don’t like untasty biscuits).

We will also be investigating commonly-held misapprehensions about whether some products are technically cakes or biscuits, providing commentary on the cutting-edge world of biscuit-related news, and giving up on the blog and forgetting it ever existed within four weeks.

“Biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, biscuits, ” — someone who likes saying ‘biscuits’ a lot. By ‘a lot’, we mean he liked saying the word ‘biscuit’ a lot of times, but he actually only liked saying ‘biscuits’ a lot a bit.

We’ll be ~~biscuiting~~ kicking off with our inaugural review of the traditional Garibaldi biscuit, which despite being an (in)famous staple of the biscuit world, is something we’ve never sampled before, and we’re hoping that it will be as revolutionary as its namesake. Until then, please enjoy this unusual picture of a biscuit favourite, the Crinkle Crunch Crispy Cream, with its outsides in!