Biscuit discovery!!

On Thursday 18th August 2005, Joe and I made a tremendous discovery. We worked out how to determine whether a biscuit is really a biscuit and not a chocolate bar or a cake in disguise.

(BELOW: The two researchers)

It all started when...

Joe was round my house and we were talking about biscuit [as you do] and i said "I'm going to create another biscuit, Pelling's Chocolate Panthers were great, so i wanna make another thing" and Joe said "I just thought. How can we be sure that Pelling's Chocolate Panthers are really a biscuit?"

Well I felt disgusted, how could Joe doubt a biscuit. But then i started thinking; how can we be sure Pelling's Chocolate Panthers are really a biscuit. They're covered in chocolate, so what makes us think that it's not a chocolate bar? I started to feel worried. So we conducted an experiment.

I ran downstairs and got all the biscuits i could find, and dumped them onto the bed. [That's Joe's hand, eagerly grabbing the first biscuit]

I stood up, selected a pen and turned to Joe. "So what makes a biscuit?" I said.

He said "We'll if it melts then it's not a very good biscuit, so put 'melting' first. Then put 'tin suitability', if it doesn't go well in a biscuit tin, it's not a very good biscuit."

"We've got to put 'noise', you know there's that biscuit noise" I said.

"Yeah" Joe agreed. "You've got to have 'effect' as well"

"And 'crumbs', if it doesn't crumble it's not a proper biscuit!"

"Yes!" said Joe.

So i started to create the table on my white board. Suddenly Joe said "'Tea-dunking ability!' We forgot 'tea-dunking ability!'"

"Oh yes" I said, and added it onto the table. We thought of all the different types of biscuit we could experiment on and added them to the table.

Then we conducted our experiment. We selected a biscuit and took it in turns to see whether it melted, whether it could go into a biscuit tin, if it made a noise when you bit it, if it felt good when you chewed it, if it produced crumbs and whether it was suitable to be dunked into tea.

After 20 mins of careful examination we came up with these results...

We gave a TICK if the biscuit met the criteria and a CROSS if it didn't. A double tick meant it was really good and a double cross meant it was terrible.

After analysing the results it became clear that the HOB NOB was the best of all biscuits, closely followed by BOURBON, CUSTARD CREAM and JAMMIE DODGERS. The JAFFA CAKE was the worst biscuit...well how can you even call it a biscuit...its a cake, jaffa cake, the clue is in the title people...it is a cake, covered with jelly and then chocolate...A CHOCOLATE COVERED JELLY CAKE...nowhere does it say BISCUIT...and yet it is still put in the biscuit section in shops! It is not a biscuit...it shouldn't even be classed as any type of biscuit...as you can see from the biscuit test, the only tick was on tin suitability and that's because of the CAKE bit! YOU'RE NOT A BISCUIT...Jaffa CAKE!

I'm sorry for that, but someone had to say it, and that person just so happened to be me. Urhum...

So...after studying the results carefully, me and Joe decided that a biscuit is a biscuit as long as it doesn't have chocolate on it. The minute you start adding chocolate it takes away the biscuityness. All of the biscuits that melted got a cross, so did the ones that couldn't go into a biscuit tin, as for being unable to be dunked into tea...well...that's disgraceful!

"Who ever decided to add chocolate to biscuits?" was the question we asked ourselves next. Hob Nobs - great - get no crosses in the biscuit table, but as soon as some pillock decided to add chocolate to it, and create the Chocolate Hob Nob, you then start to get all manner of problems. It gets a cross under 'no melting', only one tick for 'tin suitability', keeps it's ticks for 'noise', 'effect' and 'crumbs', but loses a tick for 'tea-dunking ability'. So the faithful Hob Nob goes from being a high flyer at 8 to a lousy 5.

We tried to find the main source of the problem. We thought back to when the first biscuit got introduced to chocolate and we realised it was the chocolate biscuit, so you know who we've got to blame for the catastrophe!

Yes! This company may produce nice tasting biscuits, but as soon as you add the chocolate to the biscuit, you rob it of it's biscuit pride!

"Hang on a minute" i thought suddenly. If a Chocolate Hob Nob gets 5 in the biscuit table, how comes my Pelling's Chocolate Panthers only get 2. I studied the table and realised that although a Chocolate Hob Nob has chocolate on it, it is only on one surface, so it gets a tick for tin suitability because there is a possibility that they won't get stuck together, unlike with a Pelling's Chocolate Panther where each surface could get stuck. Also a Hob Nob can produce crumbs...but how can a Pelling's Chocolate Panther produce crumbs if there is chocolate holding it together, and as for tea-dunking - who ever heard of chocolate being dunked into tea?

So Pelling's Chocolate Panthers get nearly the lowest in the table...BUT...if you remove chocolate from five of the sides...

So in answer to Joe's question "How can we be sure that a Pelling's Chocolate Panther is really a biscuit?"..........Only put chocolate on the top of the wafer!!!

If you have any questions about biscuits that you need answering, don't hesitate to email me or joe or leave a message in the guestbook.