I think that is genuinely a work of art!
Hi, I’m Josh.
I’m Ollie.
And today we’re gonna be diving headfirst into the world of British tea and biscuits.
Have you conducted a robbery or something, in the biscuit aisle?
This is too much, this is too much!
My original plan was to just buy every type of biscuit.
What do you mean plan, you’ve done it!
This is just a taste for people at home.
You must be the only person in the world who, sitting in front of this claims to have exercised restraint.
Quite a lot of restraint I thought.
On my quest Ollie for good British food.
I was having a cup of tea and a biscuit this morning and thinking about it and I thought wait a second.
Eureka! Wait a second.
What do British people eat more than anything?
Probably biscuits.
Tea and biscuits.
Gotta start with the original, the Digestive.
That’s disappointing, isn’t it.
You’ve just gone ahead and dipped!
You’ve just gone ahead and dipped and you’ve experienced a Brits worst nightmare when you
dip and it gets jammed in the cup.
A digestive can I just say, traditional British biscuit is made about a hundred times better
when dipped in a cup of tea.
You know I’m not above just opening a pack of biscuits and eating them sans tea.
Without tea?
Wow, yeah I figured. Yeah. That’s the French.
It’s just you're in a shirt I felt like I needed to be smart.
Our second pack of biscuits we have, I would make a case for maybe the nations favourite biscuit.
The chocolate digestive.
That’s another level, that just takes the original digestive and elevates it to a near-perfect level,
I mean that is, that’s a ten out of ten.
It’s estimated that between 3-6 billion of them are eaten a year.
That’s quite a sway, that’s like a margin of error of over a hundred percent.
It depends on the year.
What do you mean it depends on the year, who’s like, last year I ate 300 hundred biscuits
but this year I think I’m gonna eat 650!
I read another stat which said that week eat 8 million biscuits a week.
Ok, let’s think about this it’s 52 times 8.
It’s 416.
So that’s half a billion, that’s so far below the 3 billion.
Oh no no it was per day.
What 8 times 365?
The answer is 2 thousand, 9 hundred, and twenty…
Just about beat 3 billion.
2.9 billion, it adds up. We really didn’t need any of that.
We eat a lot of biscuits, right?
Not 2.9 billion, but you know who’s counting.
Now a hobnob, difference here between a hobnob and a digestive, we’re getting into very
specific details, hobnob is a bit more knobbly.
That’s a word I never wanted to hear while eating.
It’s a lot sturdier right, Peter Kay described it as the special forces of biscuits.
Wait what?
Because it can take infinite dunking.
Hobnobs are like marines, hobnobs.
They’re like SAS, they’re like Steven Seagal at biscuit world an hobnob.
You dip and hobnob, it’s like, again!
Dip me again!
I’m going nowhere me son, dip me!
Some biscuits you dip it once, and then your like, oh crap better get it out otherwise
it’s gonna crumble.
Exactly.
This one, not a single crumb has left that biscuit and gone into the tea.
I know, you could keep going.
How many times should I do it before it gets gross?
Just keep going.
Is it not gross yet?
I skimmed it against the side of the cup and now a bit of the biscuit came off.
It just suddenly got gross!
It was like, not gross, not gross, not gross, not gross, inedible.
My question is if a biscuit does crumble a bit into your tea do you still drink the tea?
Yeah!
We hit the limit!
Now it’s all in there I need to fish it out.
No, don’t fish it out, out of sight out of mind Josh.
There’s no structure to this, I’m gonna give it structure.
King and Queen.
Chocolate hobnob, chocolate digestive, we now need to rate them how close to the throne are they.
Hobnobs and digestives, they are the king and queen without the sweetness.
Exactly, ginger nut, Prince Harry, how did I not see that coming.
We then have the chocolate digestive spin-offs.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of those.
Dark chocolate digestive.
Not a fan of those, they’re like the princesses.
What’s that one?
A little bit of extra sweetness added, caramel chocolate digestive, dip it.
The best way to describe one of these, it’s like an English Stroop waffle.
What we’ve tried so far are the most common I’d say.
If you go to a supermarket and you want to buy some biscuits to have with a cup of tea
that’s what you buy.
However, there are some others that are proper classics, everyone had as a child growing up.
Now in this section obviously you’ve got your custard creams, the slightly confusingly named bourbons.
Spelt the same as the American whiskey which is bourbon but instead bourbon.
And your malted milk, and then, of course, the rich tea which…
I never grew out of.
They literally just taste like nothing.
I love them.
This is literally the essence of bland.
It’s maybe the most bland food, that was ever created.
It's like you take a biscuit, and then you take all of the flavour out of it.
It’s somewhere between cardboard and, I dunno, wheat.
I like these after dinner with a yoghurt.
With a yoghurt?
What are you like 3 years old?
Strawberry yoghurt.
You're not the first person to ask that Josh.
Strawberries my favourite actually.
So, whenever I think of this I think soggy.
That’s why you don’t dip.
I want to dip a biscuit in tea, if I'm having a biscuit its cos I have a cup of tea and I wanna dip it.
you dip that in.
Instantly, can you see that?
It just instantly look like wet cardboard.
And that’s kind of the texture.
It almost is flopping over it’s that soft.
Its genuinely.
It’s horrible, it’s absolutely horrible.
We’re gonna talk about party rings.
Now I was reluctant to get these.
This is the ultimate childhood biscuit.
Yeah, I wouldn’t even call it a biscuit, it’s too sugary for me.
Do you remember doing this as well?
I’d completely forgotten…
Wow, my fingers are too big to do that with them now.
So that’s literally just a very plain biscuit with a thick layer of sugar icing on top.
So sweet, I used to like them a lot more when I was a kid.
This is a personal favourite of mine fig rolls!
It’s not really a roll in the same way a sausage roll, well it does look kind of like
a mini sausage roll though.
It’s just fig on the inside, I have fond memories of these, we used to have them every
time we went to my grandma’s house.
I feel like she thought she could feel a little less guilty because you know there’s fruit in it.
Giving us a biscuit, you know we always want a biscuit. Classic grandma logic.
I mean no disrespect to your grandma but she chose literally the worst biscuit.
Controversial, Jaffa Cakes.
Look at that right there, it’s like a biscuit but it’s squidgier, it’s got chocolate
on the top and then in the middle a layer of orange marmalade kind of thing?
You think it’s cake or do you think it’s a biscuit.
I wouldn’t call it a biscuit, to me, it’s more chocolaty than biscuity. Oh really?
It defies categorization.
Well, you know what definitely isn't a biscuit but is amazing.
Tea Cakes.
I think actually, I’m being serious now, I actually think they’re beautiful.
They are a work of art.
I think that is genuinely a work of art.
I mean even the way they are wrapped, and they’re so delicate, you know?
And they go back to 1890!
People have been eating these in England for a long time.
You could get served that at the Ritz and it’s like a thing.
It's true, and you wouldn’t be upset.
Full of delicious marshmallows, oh it does have a biscuit on the bottom!
Really good!
A nice fat layer of marshmallow on the top.
That’s the best of the best when it comes to biscuits and tea.
Well, there’s shortbread.
Shortbread is good!
But again that’s a biscuit that’s called a bread, there’s so many different words.
That is confusing.
We’ve had jaffa cakes, tea cakes, shortbread. That’s true
Shortbreads the queen’s mother.
It’s dead.
No!
What I mean is it’s old and regal and it’s like done with power it doesn’t need it,
but it’s got heritage and history.
Fondly remembered.
Exactly
And who actually has shortbread with their tea anymore, very few people.
But I bet the queen mum did.
Wow! That’s like the English way of dropping the mic.
Just crunch the shortbread.
Well, I hope you’ve been enlightened, I certainly have. Indeed.
Let us know your favourite biscuit if you have one.
And well see you jolly soon.
Bye.
Hello, my name is Marina, I’m originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, but currently residing
in Munich, Germany.
And my reason to be jolly today is,
This freshly mopped floor.