Don’t believe anyone who says they don’t have a favourite biscuit. Everyone has a favourite biscuit, and if not, they are odd. Like Gordon Brown. He doesn’t have a favourite. We know, because in an interview for the parenting website Mumsnet he failed to provide an answer to the question, eventually coming up with a vague, suspiciously weird, non-specific answer (“anything with a bit of chocolate on”) 24 hours later. Odd, I tell you.
People who don’t have a favourite biscuit should sit a nationality test, for if there’s anything that spells British loud and proud it’s got to be a steaming mug of builder’s tea with milk chocolate HobNobs, satisfyingly crumbly with a smooth layer of sweet milky chocolate on top, just right for dunking.
Or at least that’s my opinion. No doubt many will disagree, crying outrage at the choice of HobNobs over a packet of good old digestives or the Jammie Dodgers of their childhoods.
Britons eat more biscuits than any other nation. We eat 542,000 packets a day and spend £328 a minute buying them, according to Sainsbury’s.
“There is something so lovely and comforting about a good biscuit,” says Harriet Hastings, co-founder of the luxury iced-biscuit company (no digestives here) Biscuiteers, who is partial to a chocolate biscuit with her tea. “It’s definitely a very British thing.”
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So, which is the greatest British biscuit, you ask? Well, who knows? It’s a debate that has likely divided families, friends and colleagues since the beginning of biscuit time, in the 1600s.
“People have favourite biscuits for different reasons,” says Scott King, the director of Condiment Junkie, which specialises in the sensory experience of eating. It has researched the nation’s biscuit-eating habits for an installation at the British Biscuit Festival, a three-day jolly starting at the Brunswick Centre in London tomorrow.
“When we asked them, most people picked classics — Rich Teas, Jammie Dodgers, Garibaldis and Bourbons. Most chose biscuits that they might not eat that often, but which transport them back to their childhood and memories of going round to granny’s house.”
For King, a good biscuit is “something that gives a satisfying crunch and snap when you take that first bite, so it’s got to be Ginger Nuts, which are a classic — although Fox’s has a very good crunch range too”. Each to their own.
In 2010, Onepoll.com, the research company, proclaimed custard creams as the nation’s favourite after surveying 6,000 Brits. (“The fun is in how you eat it, nibbling off one side, licking the cream centre and finally munching the second side,” it reported.) But then in 2011, Sainsbury’s crowned the humble, plain, and some might say rather boring, digestive as the most loved biscuit.
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And so the quest to find the best biscuit continues. At the British Biscuit Festival, Annabel de Vetten, a baker from the Conjurer’s Kitchen, will hold biscuit-making masterclasses.
“Everyone likes them,” she says. “They go well with everything, they are a perfect treat and the classic biscuits, like custard creams, which are my favourite, are just so charming. You just can’t ever go wrong with a good biscuit.”
The British Biscuit Festival, the Brunswick Centre, Bloomsbury, June 8-10, brunswick.co.uk