The Dip List

26 Notes

This list represents the culmination of over 6 years of tireless research. It started when I was 17, and first discovering the joys of biscuit dipping. After the initial sense of wonder at the transformative power of tea (or coffee) on a biscuit wore off, I begun to notice certain trends: Rich Teas would often break in half and drown in the mug, Chocolate Digestives left your fingers covered in chocolate — was that a bad thing or a good thing? — and Hob Nobs left mountains of crumbs everywhere, including the bottom of the mug, turning it into a messy sludge. I experimented randomly for a little while, with no particular goal in mind. I found moderate success with plain Digestives, but wasn’t a fan of the taste, and still found them too crumby. Custard Creams, too, showed good results, but often came apart. Eventually, I organised myself, and formulated a plan. I was going to find out once and for all, just what is the best biscuit for dipping?

I’d need some points to measure against, and this is what I eventually settled on:

How much of an improvement is there in taste post-dip?

How common is biscuit breakage? Is there an optimum dip time for avoiding it?

How gay does this biscuit make me look? (Party Rings)

How crumbly is the biscuit? How much mess does it leave around the mug, and how much of a sludge is left at the bottom of the mug?

Does the biscuit leave any residue on my fingers, post-dip? How does it affect the overall experience? (See: finger licking)

Six years of tireless research, experimentation, and excessive biscuit consumption later, and I believe I have arrived at a conclusion. It was a long hard road: there was much speak of bias and inconclusive results among my colleagues, and my parents threatened to rescind my grant money more times than I care to count. But I won them over, and I completed my research.

Here are my notes. (Note that I’ve tried to refrain from particular brand names here, except where not possible, to eliminate any accusations of bias.)

Let’s start with Digestives, the classic British biscuit, and biscuit of choice for farmers all over the world (fact). Immediately obvious: Digestives are boring. They do not taste good. And they also crumb quite a lot, particularly toward the bottom of the packet. Poor performance.

Their sister biscuit, the Chocolate Digestive, puts up a much improved performance. The layer of chocolate on the top makes a good deal of difference, taste-wise. They do have an annoying habit of coating your fingers in chocolate (because the heat of the beverage melts them), but in some cases this is a good thing, because of the ensuing finger licking. Especially fun with a female companion. There is also an advanced maneuver you might try, that my Father often trumpeted: joining two biscuits, chocolate side facing inwards. This produces good results, but the biscuit often becomes too thick. Another downside, and the reason my Father dropped this concoction a year ago: know what’s worse than one biscuit breaking off into your drink? Two biscuits breaking off. Gotta be careful with that one.

Now, Party Rings. It’s a fact that they’re the gayest biscuit in this line-up, but can gay biscuits be dipped? What do you think? The Party Rings performed excellently, much to my surprise. The sugary top layer really benefits from soaking up some hot, steamy tea, before deftly sliding it into the gaping chasm of your mouth, whereupon it is advised that you suck gently, before softly nibbling. And they come with a convenient centre orifice through which a finger can be inserted, making the handling of the biscuit a lot easier and sexier. Like I said, gayest biscuit ever, but excellent performance.

There’s a category of biscuits that did not perform well overall: biscuits with fillings. Custard Creams, Chocolate bourbons, Jammie Dodgers, etc. In some cases, the taste improvement was a good one (Custard Creams), but in most, there was already enoguh taste from the filling that it merely became overwhelming. And these biscuits have a higher chance than most of breaking. Proceed with extreme caution.

One last thing: never dip a fucking Jaffa Cake. Trust me.

Without further ado, I present my findings!

Nice

Party Rings

Ginger Nut

Hob Nobs

Chocolate Digestive

Custard Creams/Digestives (tied)

Digestives

Jammie Dodgers

Rich Tea

You’ll note that the surprise performer, the Party Rings, were beaten out by the mystery biscuit “Nice.” What is this biscuit, you ask? Why would they name a biscuit with such a mediocre adjective?

The Nice is truely a wildcard here, and is somewhat rare in the biscuit world. You won’t typically find it available for purchase on its own; it will usually be bundled with a few other types of biscuit (most often, the Malted Milk and the Custard Cream). But it’s worth hunting down: the thickness is perfect, there are almost no crumbs (and most of the debris is just sugar), and the taste is far, far above any other biscuit here.

Despite finding the best biscuit once and for all, I believe I made a far more important discovery earlier that warrants repeating. The most important thing I learned from this:

Never dip a fucking Jaffa Cake. Never.

Bibliography

Biscuits

This is awesome however I must say you can and must dip a jaffa cake… but only if you have nibbled off the edges… licked off the chocolate and then peeled off the jelly… then you have a round biscuit kinda resembling a sponge finger… and that is good for dipping. It also extends the pleasure.