snacking before bed = DON'T DO IT

Damn right I had a few midget gems and then fell asleep, THE DREAMS THE HORRIBLE DREAMS.

http://www.waitrose.com/images/wfi/0002110-01.jpg

(curses)

It's 1850 and in the town of Reading, Berkshire, emerging biscuit giant Huntley and Palmer is experimenting with some new biscuit technology. However, the new biscuits emerge from the oven having actually shrunken. Thomas Huntley likes the resulting mini biscuits which are christened Gems and they sell well. Sixty years later in 1910 they add icing and children's birthday parties would incomplete without these mini biscuits from here on in.
In the 1970s Huntley and Palmer, Peek Frean and Jacobs joined to form Associated Biscuits. American biscuit giant Nabisco took over Associated Biscuits in 1982, and the company was renamed as the Jacobs Bakery Ltd in 1989 and acquired by Danone. Now made in Liverpool there are very few biscuits that can trace their origins back 150 years, and which everybody can remember from their childhood even if you have just had your telegram from the Queen.

Now I have to say that it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I approached the review pack which consisted of six mini bags of Iced Gems. I've always pictured them as a sort of sweetened gravel. When visiting our local builders merchants I find myself subconsciously looking for hundred weight bags of them amongst pea shingle and quarter inch chippings.

Other manufacturers have adopted the mini bag format but Iced Gems have been available like this for donkey's years. There seems to have been a some changes to the Iced Gem since I last had them, er, probably about thirty years ago. The changes however seem to be mainly confined to the icing which is no bad thing. Now some you may have to help me with this but I'm sure there used to be a pale green Iced Gem. Today's iced gems have five colours, white, yellow, orange, red and purple. Chocolate versions are also now available but we thought we'ed stick with the classics. I also don't recall the icing actually tasting of anything that tasted of anything apart from sugar. I also seem to remember there being some fairly lethal sharp points on the icing which could inflict minor havoc on the roof of one's mouth.

So I don't know if I'm happy or sad to see that the points have largely gone and that the icing actually has discernible flavours, slightly fruity ones at that. In fact I really was put in mind of various berries, red currents and blackberries. A ten point piping nozzle places the icing some where on the base and vertical orientation of the biscuit is pot luck. Just in case I was getting carried away, the biscuit base is still as dry and uninspiring as ever. Back in the late 1850's things must have been pretty rough if just straight non-Iced Gems were a big hit. If we hopped in our time machine and went back to the mid eighteen hundreds armed with a pack of Chocolate Hobnobs or even just a simple fruit shortcake no doubt we could actually produce sensory overload and stupefaction in the populace.

The base has on the top side a small square design in the center of which is a solitary hole or 'docker' and measures 21mm by 6mm with the icing taking the whole thing to 20mm high. The underside has a series of parallel marks from the baking surface, presumably some form of wire mesh. Fairly unique among biscuits the edge has a pattern too, vertical scoring some what like a pound coin.

So yes I mildly enjoyed these little old biscuits, but I did find myself strangely missing the puncture wounds in the top of my mouth. Needless to say the younger members of staff devoured them with relish

1 bowl of strawberries
0.5 Xanax
Nestle Quik with %1 milk, chilled

SWEETEST DREAMS EVER

i feel disgusted to reveal that, and i call for somebody to slap me in the face like kirk douglas would.

but i hadn't eaten anything, so what was that?