Tesco Finest Mature Cheese Oat Nibbles

Obviously a posher snack than your average because there's more packaging involved. Always the way. And obviously you get fewer snacks.

Hand baked, melt-in-the-mouth oat nibbles from a small family-owned bakery in Aberdeenshire. They use an all butter recipe, locally milled Scottish oats and freshly mature cheddar cheese, then bake them in small batches at a low heat for a beautifully soft texture. Says the packet.

Mmmnn.... these little nibbles look surprisingly dull but taste surprisingly good. Certainly very cheesy. And with an oddly cool mouth feel - that must be something to do with the oats. I can't say that they melt in my mouth but I do find them rather tasty.

Nice.

The Chef, who is mixing our Christmas cake as I write, thinks the is a pretty OK crispy snack too. He says the cheesiness kind of creeps up on you. And suddenly these little biscuits turn out to be really very cheesy indeed.

If you feel these little oaty biscuits are a little dry (which I don't) it works very well indeed to add a little application of butter. Probably works nicely with a little extra cheese too.

Jacobs Crinklys Cheese & Onion Flavour

Oh these crinkly little biscuits are good. Sorry; that's a cheese snack biscuit not just any old biscuit.

I found this packet at Luton Airport but as with so many things I am sure you can buy them in other places - just not in my local shopping street.

What we have is basically a crinkly version of the Mini Cheddar. And I think it really works well. Somehow they seem a little bit lighter than the usual style of Mini Cheddar, with a very good light crunch.

And a great taste. This seems like the archetypal cheese and onion flavour. Delicious. Great cheese and onion aroma, great cheese and onion taste. Not too oniony, not too sweet, not all smart and 5 star restauranty with caramelised onion or whatnot. No. Just extremely good cheese and onion. I think they qualify for a yum.

A nice little 50g bag too so no danger of eating far too many. And as you know, with any really good crispy snack that is always a danger. Ah, you say, but you can't share this bag with friends because you don't have enough to go round. No. Quite right. But they are far too good to share so I don't care.

Savoury satisfaction time after time says the packaging. You know what? They may be right.



These little biscuits were marketed as a McVitie's product. A Mini Cheddar. They've now dropped the  Mini Cheddar and the maker is Jacob's. But as both McVitie's and Jacob's are brands owned by United Biscuits I'm not sure what difference this makes.

Still a very tasty product.

First published 9th July 2014.

Belin Monaco à l'Emmental

This little 55g box of cheesy biscuits came (you've already guessed, I'm sure) from a French motorway service station.

It's a tiny little box of tiny little salty biscuits strewn with grated cheese and baked to extreme crispiness. And very good too. I could have eaten the whole box with no difficulty at all. The difficulty is stopping eating them: they are so small and so tasty that one is not enough.

But I bravely stopped snacking and gave the rest of the box to the Chef. He had been looking forward to trying this crispy biscuit.

The packaging says Monaco, le roi du fromage chez les Crackers Belin. Which confused me because it sounds as though Monaco is a kind of cheese. Well, there is a kind of cheese called Provolone del Monaco but Belin don't use it to make these little biscuits. So I'm guessing that Monaco is the style of biscuitty snack. And the biscuit is the king of cheese? I'm really not sure.

I tried looking for a helpful Belin website and couldn't find one. There is a Facebook page Apéro Belin but that really doesn't tell you much.

What I can say is that these little biscuits are not tremendously fabulous and not super exciting. But they are extremely moreish and if you try one you will want another. Because they are good.

Thomas J Fudge's Flaky Cheddar Wafers and Fiery Jalapeño Wafers

Perfect for Nibbling says the packaging.

What raindrops are to turnips nibbles are to friendship. Or it could be the other way around: nibbles are to friendship what raindrops are to turnips. In either case: what? There's quite a lot of weird stuff going on with the packaging.

These two biscuits were also chosen for the recent leaving party at work because we were looking for something a little bit posh. And a little bit posh they are.

Both have a soft crunch with almost a home-made feel, although I think you would struggle to make little biscuits quite this thin at home.  The Flaky Cheddar wafers have a gentle cheesy taste, and the Fiery Jalapeño wafers (which you can tell apart from the Cheddar by the little green bits of chilli) have quite a significant fiery hot bite.

Both wafers are rather good. And exceedingly posh.

Thomas J Fudge is a "remarkable bakery" which was established in Dorset in 1916 by the current owners' great-great-uncle Thomas J Fudge. According to the packaging he was a dapper chap with a distinctive moustache. His bakery is described as remarkable and Dorset is beautiful and bountiful. His buns were buttery, his bread was brilliant and his biscuits were the business. Or so the packet claims. And the family continues Thomas J's remarkable, edible work. Or so they say.

The biscuits come in a plastic baggie encased in a smart cardboard box. And in the side of the box is a scalloped peep hole through which you can see the wafers of your choice.

The family Fudge recommends ice cold white wine with the Flaky Cheddar wafers; delicious with a portion of witty banter. Or try the Fiery Jalapeño wafers with cooling yoghurt dips, bubbly beverages or something rich and red; perfect with plenty of hysterical laughter. So; many instructions on how best to enjoy your wafers.

Great to fancy up your drinks party. Some of these were eaten at the party and the rest were eagerly snapped up by the reluctant taste testers the next day.

KP Cheese & Tomato Christmas Crackers

An assortment of festive shaped crackers it says on the tub. Perfect for Sharing!

Mmn.... what you get in this tub of Christmas crackers is a selection of little biscuits; star-, Christmas tree-, and (presumably Christmas) bell-shaped biscuits - with a sort of cheese and tomato streusel topping.

I had hoped for great things from this new product. Because cheese footballs, which I love, come in tubs as do the terrific cheeselets (this year of course they are treeslets) and of course twiglets. All great tasty snacks.

Unfortunately although the cheese and tomato topping tastes quite cheese and tomatoey, and herby too, the biscuits themselves are characterless and dry. Which is a real shame.

So we were't that impressed. And neither were the reluctant taste testers.

I'm afraid these get a "could do better" rating. Suitable for vegetarians though.

Jacob's Treeselets

Oh yes! Jacob's fabulous Cheeselets now come in tree form. Of course they do.

And they're called Treeselets. Obviously.

I've written about Cheeselets before of course, and they are one of my very favourite cheesy snacks. You can read about them here if you like, because, you know, I'm not going to repeat what I said about these terrific little cheesy biscuits in September 2013.

But hey! Now they come in the shape of a Christmas tree.

Can't decide if the Christmas tree form is a little bit brilliant or a little bit sad. Still ultra tasty though.

For scale, this little tree is sitting on the smallest size of post-it: 38 x 51mm. And I thought it would be appropriate to photograph the tub in front of my tree books.

I guess this is a Christmas 2014 special. We'll see if they appear again in the future. 

Crak's Finement Salé

Well, here's complicated. Crak's seems to be a Tuc brand, and Tuc seems to be owned by LU which is a French biscuit company (apparently from Nantes), and LU is in turn owned by Kraft Foods which is now called Mondelez International.

The weird thing is that I always thought Tuc was a UK brand. We used to have a TV commercial featuring a really annoying jingle: Tuc by itself is a snappy happy cracker, and a super snappy cracker with cheese. I think that's how it went.

Anyway, these little salted biscuits are perfectly OK but a little bit dull on their own. Quite a dull taste but in a really tasty way. I only bought one of the gussetted bags because inside the gusset it says "idéal pour le dipping!" and I couldn't resist. "Tout à fait adapter au dipping" it says.

Unfortunately this will be le dipping as practiced in France and the UK. And we were trying these in Switzerland and couldn't find any dips quite suited to the task; not even in the huge Co-op in Conthey. We tried the local version of guacamole but it was very thick and more something you might spread on toast rather than use as a dip.

I think they would be very good indeed with a proper dip. Nice crunch, good salty taste (but not too much) and a little bit sweet,  and in fact a rather pretty shape. Not bad Crak's.... or Tuc.... or LU.

I tried looking on the LU website for further information but it seems you can only access it in Metropolitan France. Which is a shame because I would have like to find out more. Weirdly made in Italy.

One to try again if I had a proper dip.

Llama's BBQ Whole Wheat Baked Bites

A second Llama flavour and just as much fun as the first I tried which you can read about here.

And the reluctant taste testers at work seemed quite keen too. Particularly Jo, who comes to us in the holidays and does all manner of things in the office from scanning and filing to building Ikea furniture. He's much more open to trying weird crisp flavours than some.

The flavour is supposed to be BBQ which you may remember I'm not always mad about, but it's a gentle BBQ here. Laid carefully over the essentially digestive biscuit taste of the whole wheat llamas.

I know. It does sound a bit strange but somehow it works. Not a crunchy crispy snack for everyday perhaps, but actually really tasty and fun too. I find people remember snacks that come in crazy shapes and llamas are certainly memorable.

And they're actually really tiny. Each little biscuity llama is only 15mm high and maybe 8mm wide. When I opened the first packet I don't really know quite what I was expecting - but something larger than 15mm high.

Great little snack. Highly recommended. (From Mr Tesco again so I had to trek to Finchley Central.)