They are biscuits, most likely made with buttermilk, with different serving options… Scones are different…
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They don’t go in tea so they don’t make the list!
NEXT!!
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McVitie’s (and Macdonald before them) considered them biscuits.
Penguins are essentially chocolate-covered Bourbons, so I would say either both are biscuits, or neither are. (This is a lie; as a Yank, I would say both are cookies.)
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They’re pretty much TimTams which you DO dip in tea, but you have to bite off oppposing corners and use the TimTam like a straw to drink the tea.
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1: Dark Chocolate Digestive
2: Plain Digestive
3: Rich Tea
4: Ginger Nut
5: Graham Cracker
No way: Jammie Dodgers
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I’m not a fan of fish fingers, either!
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But! After you mix the dry, you take your cold butter and roll the whole stick or block in the flour, then shred the butter on a cheese grate like this one, and carefully toss in the butter cheers so they get coated in flour and maintain their separateness better than with dough cutters.
And then my motto is, only fold and mix as much as you need to to get it to hold together and be relatively homogenous, so you don’t mix too much of that butter in.
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That’s a whole 'nuther can of worms1, eg
Travellers returning from the antipodes have spoken of a biscuit, the Tim Tam, remarkably similar to the Penguin and yet somehow different. Australian visitors, and cultural ambassadors to our shores have also poured scorn upon our humble Penguin, whilst performing questionable and lurid tea drinking acts with it.
There is not, as far as I am aware, an American version, or else my family would be consumers. (Of course, we have a decent selection of pretty good cookies on our side of the Atlantic, so it isn’t exactly like we’re all turning into Twiggys from lack of baked goods.)
1Not to be mistaken for “diet of worms”.
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Im in the Chicago area and can get TimTams at the international section of one of the local chain stores. No p-p-p-penguins though
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Our international selections tend towards Asian (and Brazilian for some reason), though we do see British goods on the shelf on occasion (at stupidly high prices), and Walkers Shortbread is everywhere. However, when Bourbon Creams are more expensive than Famous Chocolate Wafers, I’ll go for the latter (though they’re almost as hard to find as the former nowadays). (And I really miss the old Nabisco Butter Cookies—the round ones with the hole in the middle. R.I.P.)
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Important PSA: you cannot slam a penguin!
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Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer
Hobnob
Ginger Nut
Custard Cream
Jammie Dodger
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Trying to internationalise it a bit:
- Dark chocolate digestive (yeah, you’re just right about that)
- Mulino Bianco Pan di Stelle
- Plain chocolate Mikado/Pocky
- Ülker Biskrem Duo
- Chocolate Butterkeks (plain Butterkeks being the platonic ideal of a biscuit but not going with tea as well)
Honourable mention: pretty much any northern French biscuit (Sablés, Palets Bretonnes, etc.) and Mulino Bianco’s other offerings
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The Pocky is the most popular cookie in Japan, and has been around for 100 years. They’re in all the local supermarkets. I wonder why they use the name “Mikado” in Europe.
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I mean, because it sounds vaguely Japanese and they look like Mikado sticks?
It was launched in France in the eighties, so the vague orientalism probably shouldn’t be a surprise.
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I had to look that one up.
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Yeah, sorry, they’re a very popular game in Europe but may be known under different names in other parts of the world.
For reference:
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