Tim Tams and other Australian Treats

It seems odd to think that we now live closer to Australia than the UK.  One of our local supermarkets, Supasave (more commonly known as Supaspend due to its extortionate pricing - we don't often shop there), stocks a lot of Australian foods, and even the local Asian supermarkets have several Aussie items in stock.

We eat Australian butter (and not just because I love the packaging!):

And we drink Australian UHT milk (which tastes fine as long as you get the skimmed). 

We eat much less dairy produce here than we used to, but when the cheese-sandwich craving hits we use the outrageously-named Australian cheddar:

Australia's tastiest most racist cheese...

We also occasionally pick up an Australian treat - last week Supasave had had a consignment of Aussie ginger beer which I wanted to try, mainly because I liked the dumpy brown glass bottle.

This week we also picked up a packet of the legendary Arnott's Tim Tams. I first heard about these from reading my beloved biscuit encyclopaedia A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down.  Anyone who loves biscuits but is not familiar with this book I urge you to seek it out.  Written by Nicey and Wifey it's the result of one man's lifetime love of tea and biscuits (accompanied by a nice sit down of course), hilariously written but also full of fascinating facts and trivia.

Nicey approves of the Tim Tam and I was keen to try it too.  They are similar to the Penguin in design, but much as it pains me to admit it, this Antipodean version is far superior.  The biscuit is much crisper and has an almost honeycomb taste.  The chocolate is OK - not a patch on 'real' Dairy Milk of course, but not as vile as Asian chocolate (see previous post).

My only complaint is that they are not individually wrapped which means a) it's hard to pop one in your lunchbox (would get very messy with the rice) and b) we are likely to eat them all far too quickly. 

We were also intrigued by the idea of performing the Tim Tam Slam, which involves biting off diagonally opposite corners of the Tim Tam and using the biscuit as a straw through which to suck up your tea.  We had just got home from the supermarket when we opened this packet so the chocolate was a bit melty.  We therefore felt that the Slam was a pretty risky proposition so didn't try it.  However, now the Tim Tams have been in the fridge for several hours I feel we might have to have a go...