getbracknell - Reading Evening Post

Biscuits like the digestive, the rich tea, the bourbon and many of our old favourites are finding themselves battling for supermarket shelf space with colourful imports from overseas.

So, which ones are worth spending your hard earned pennies on and which would be better sent back where they came from?

I brought three varieties of foreign biscuit into the office with me this week to test out on my hungry colleagues – The Oreo Cookie from America (chocolaty), the Ratafia biscuit from Italy (macaroony) and the Choco Leibniz from Germany (difficult to say).

The first thing that’s worth pointing out is that they are all a bit on the expensive side. One of my favourite things about biscuits is that, in these times of spiralling prices, the biscuit remains a relatively cheap treat. All of today’s foreign biscuits cost much more than a pound each for a packet (note how I avoided the cheap ‘credit crunch’ pun…).

So which one came out on top in the office test?

Hard to say really, they all had their merits. The Ratafias come in a big bag and are light, tasty and morish although they aren’t the most biscuity of biscuits. I’m not sure what they are, maybe more a trifle ingredient than a biscuit – as the editor of the Wokingham Times said: “They aren’t really a biscuit, they should come on a platter with a cup of tea.”

The Choco Leibniz were delicious as far as I was concerned, thick, proper chocolate on top of a rich tea style base – who could ask for more (apart from a few more in the packet – nine biscuits for one pound twenty-odd?!)? 

The Oreo biscuits were unexpectedly good to dunk, tasty and fun – any biscuit that can be pulled apart and eaten inside out is good as far as I’m concerned.

I went to quiz one of my colleagues about her favourite international biscuit and, when probed about where the best biscuit came from, said helpfully: “Oreo Land”.

Once out of her biscuit induced trance she continued: “They are amazing biscuits. Oreos are versatile too – they’re amazing with ice cream.”

It also turned out that she is a fountain of Oreo knowledge and she informed me that they came to this country when Wal-Mart took over at ASDA. Fascinating.

My only complaint about them is that they’re surprisingly small. They use a kid to advertise them and in juvenile mitts they look like a nice sized biscuit. In my hands they look like one of the plastic Pogs (remember them?) you chucked at the other Pogs for reasons nobody was ever sure of.

These three treats barely scratch the surface of the international biscuits available in the supermarket – not to mention the biscuits available in the delis and cafes in town.

So, what are your favourite biscuits from overseas? Have you ever had any truly awful experiences with international biscuits? Which countries produce the best and worst biscuits?