I live in Massachusetts. Being a fan of the GBBO, I became curious about the popular supermarket biscuits/cookies contestants sometimes duplicate. Sporadically, Wegmans has some in the international section, and they may be available online. I really like the dark chocolate glazed HobNobs, and the plain ones. McVities also has Digestive Biscuits, which appear to be the same thing. Are they? Or are there other brands that duplicate HobNobs?
Any other crisp, not overly sweet ones worth looking into? Thx!
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
2
Nothing compares to a Hobnob. I prefer the plain to the chocolate version.
Digestive biscuits are not the same but are also a favourite in this house. We actually usually buy them to eat with cheese, instead of the more traditional crackers. The background sweetness contrasts nicely with, say, the sharpness of a mature Cheddar or Lancashire.
McVities also make Rich Tea biscuits - they are Mrs H’s preferred biscuit to dunk in a mug of tea (a disgusting habit if you ask me) - that should be worth a try. As would Ginger Nuts - I recently tried to make these using an internet recipe but they came out with the texture of an American cookie rather than the crisp snap of a British biscuit. Dunno whether that was the intent or if I failed somewhere along the process.
Seeing as we’re talking about biscuits and not cakes, you might want to Google for information on the infamous McVities’ Jaffa Cake tax debacle in the early 90s. The question was should the JC be regarded as a biscuit, in which case, Value Added Tax should be levied on it (thereby raising the sale price) or should it be a cake which would be VAT-free. Legal ruling in favour of McVities that it was a cake. Jaffa Cakes are utterly delicious - I have been known to scoff a whole packet at one sitting.
FWIW, McV has a factory a few minutes drive away from me, on the other side of town. It’s been there since 1917, when it was heavily involved in wartime production of the army hardtack biscuit. Now the site produces Digestives, Jaffa Cakes and Penguins (a chocolate biscuit bar). A quick Google tells me that they produce 2000 Jaffa Cakes, per minute, there.
Mcvitie’s Ginger Nuts Biscuits, HobNobs, Rich Tea biscuits, Jaffa Cakes, and so many more are also available at British Food Supplies in Littleton.
They have a “Come and visit us” comment on their About Us page, but only show a PO Box. But a call could determine if they still have a brick and mortar store.
Thanks all! I’ve been buying online from British Food Depot, which IIRC is in a “flyover” state. They tend to have good sales when things are at or beyond best by dates. Several years ago I got recently-expired, plain HobNobs for 75% off. Unfortunately, they came during an unplanned hospitalization, so the carton sat on my front stoop for weeks, as did a box of Costco nut bars. This did not escape the notice of local gray squirrels. When I got home, all of the nut bars were gone, with empty cellophane wraps all over. The HobNob carton had contained 4 interior cartons, two of which were unmolested, the contents still fine for the additional year it took me to finish them.
One neighbor told me she had found a puzzling, still-wrapped nut bar on the table on her deck, and had countless sightings of squirrels leaping through the trees in the adjacent woods, carrying cookies in their mouths. By the by, that winter’s squirrels were QUITE chubby!
Several generations of baby squirrels must have heard the tale of “The Winter of the Bounty” by now, but it’s a true story! I’d bet that if anyone wanted to rake the woods they’d find, in several spots, a cellophane substrate.
DH is a fan of both Hobnobs and McVities (milk choco versions). Which is his favorite of the two depends on which way the wind is blowing that day. Above all, however, he prefers the similar Homeblest, which we never have been able to find in the US.
Ginger Nuts are the equivalent, in flavor and texture, of American gingersnaps. I have noticed a number of alleged gingersnap recipes that are intended to produce a soft and chewy texture (like lots of American ginger cookie recipes), rather than something actually crisp and snappy. In that case, I think they’re simply misnamed, because the non-snappy result is intentional.
There is a really nice Scottish dark chocolate ginger biscuit from Island Bakery, as well as a dark chocolate Walker’s ginger biscuit. Both are really nice.
Walker’s also has ginger lemon sandwich biscuits with a lemon cream filling. I always ginger and lemon very complementary.
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
12
We were out for dinner last night to a new place. I had a dessert - a deconstructed cheesecake, which had crushed hobnobs scattered across the plate (along with a goats cheese mousse, poached figs and fig leaves from chef’s own allotment.
There are quite a few Hobnob crust Cheesecake recipes out there on the internet. In Canada, usually Graham cracker bases are used, and occasionally oreo crumb bases.
I remember this Hobnob base cheesecake catching my eye.
I should have mentioned what I do with the “biscuits”. My afternoon treat is coffee or tea with a dark chocolate HobNob topped by an unctuous, almost jammy Blenheim apricot or dried Bartlett pear half (both ordered online from ApricotKing.com, in California). I sort of knead the piece of fruit with my fingers to spread it as thinly as possible, then savor little nibbles of the fruit-topped cookie.
I don’t much care for ginger other than in savory things.
