Wednesday 17 August 2016

Biscuit Blog: Tesco Nice Biscuits

Tesco Nice Biscuits

This is a type of biscuit that is available from many companies, that I have not yet explored but will look out for from a range of shops in coming months.  Note that while many biscuits may be 'nice' these are 'Nice', apparently, possibly, named after the city on the French Mediterranean coast.  The fact that the Dutch equivalent are called 'Nizza' biscuits adds to that view, as the Dutch word for 'nice' is 'mooi'.

As with many biscuits available in Britain there is a shape and a patterning which you will almost always find with this biscuit.  There are no 'tractor tyre' edges as on a shortcake biscuit though there is no reason why there could not be.  There is something about how the biscuit appears, no matter what company produces it, that is important to signal to consumers what they are receiving.  Though, as I am increasingly noting on this blog, actually the tastes are more and more varying from what you might expect from that type of biscuit.

Put simply a Nice biscuit is always rectangular, pale in colour and with the word 'NICE' impressed on the top side and little indentations right around edge.  It can have a covering of sugar on the top side.  It is quite a sweet biscuit and you should find strands of coconut as you bite through it.  Some can have a soft bite to them, a lack of snap, but really they should not crumble.  These from Tesco largely have these element, they have a reasonable snap and you can sense, rather than taste the coconut in them.  The striking thing about them was that they felt very 'dry' on the tongue almost as if I was eating a cracker biscuit.  This was not expected from a Nice biscuit.  Overall aside from coconut shreds, these were almost painfully plain biscuits.  They seemed better as they matured a little in biscuit jar, but I was not getting the experience I was expecting from these biscuits.  They are not appalling but I think Tesco needs to work at the recipe.  They look perfect but something is missing, some sweetness and certainly some moistness from the coconut to make these good Nice biscuits.

Rating
*****

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