Arnott’s Shapes Epic Garlic Bread
September 1, 2023 at 16:36 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, garlic bread, shapes, snack
Until today, I did not know that garlic bread could be epic. But apparently it can. And if you google it, you will find many recipes for ‘epic garlic bread’. They vary somewhat, but from what I can gather the difference between regular garlic bread and the epic variety is the addition of cheese. Adding cheese makes it epic, apparently.
Arnott’s, however, do not seem to understand this, as the new ‘Fully Loaded’ Epic Garlic Bread shapes are not cheesy. So there will be some disappointment in the snack aisle. But they do have a saving grace.
Do you remember Shapes Extreme? They were a short-lived but rather brilliant variety of Shapes that I have been hoping will make a come-back. They were different in texture from regular shapes, being lighter and thinner. Well, they are back! Epic Garlic Bread Shapes are the same thinner, crunchier texture as that earlier line. But will the taste live up to the originals?
Well, it’s not bad. It is garlicky, and bready, and herby. When you are eating them, it’s all just a bit of a salty herb confusion, but the aftertaste is very reminiscent of how you feel after eating too much garlic bread. So probably not one to eat just before a date or an important meeting. So pretty good, but not great. I’m going to give them a six out of ten.
Arnott’s Tiny Teddy Cheesy Crackers
July 23, 2018 at 21:31 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, cheese, snack, tiny teddy
There is a definite phenomenon in my life that when I like something, they stop making it. It all started with ‘All Butter Crunch’, an own-brand biscuit from the UK supermarket Sainsburys. It was a feature of my youth – all the elder Chillikebab clan loved them. In some ways, my passion for biscuits perhaps stems from that one sweetmeat, fondly remembered from when I was eight years old. And then they stopped making it. (The same thing happened with Coffee and Walnut Angel Delight, I recall).
More recently, they stopped making Cheesy Stars. These were a star-shaped cheesy snack that you could buy in Coles. They were quite a feature in the contemporary Chillikebab household – especially by Mrs Chillikebab, who loved them, ploughing through packs ostensibly bought for the kids lunchboxes. Anyway, they stopped making those too. But never fear, dear friends, for into that breach has stepped Arnott’s, with a re-imagining of the Tiny Teddy into a whole new dimension.
Yes, savoury Tiny Teddies. Who would have thought? They are cheesy, and crackery. This brings a whole new level of chompability to the genre – they have an excellent crunch, and a good salty, cheesy flavour. We like them. Not quite as much as cheesy stars, but almost. I wonder if Arnott’s are planning any over savoury cross-overs? Other than the famous cheese Tim Tam, of course.
I’m going to give these an eight out of ten.
Arnott’s Mini Jatz
May 25, 2018 at 11:34 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, cracker, jatz, mini, moreish, savoy, snack
Arnott’s have been expanding their range of ‘mini’ biscuits, perhaps driven by the glowing review I gave to the Mini Scotch Fingers. There’s quite a few now, so this week we turn our attention to the Mini Jatz.
First of all, is there also a mini Savoy? The whole Savoy / Jatz thing intrigues me. It would be cool to have a selection pack with both mini Savoy and mini Jatz in it. It would facilitate very easy comparison tastings, for example.
As it is, we get the mini Jatz in a pack together with Mini Scotch Fingers and Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies. They look, well, like mini version of regular Jatz, They are crispy, salty, and quite moreish. So moreish, in fact, that I ploughed through them forgetting to count the number of biscuits in a pack. There’s enough there for a small snack. But you will want more after you finish them.
A solid eight out of ten for this mini contender.
Shapes Light and Crispy – Sour Cream and Chives
December 8, 2016 at 20:15 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, shapes, snack
Shapes. It all seems to be about Shapes in biscuit-land at the moment. New Shapes, Original Shapes, New-but-now-original-again Shapes – it has been dominating the biscuit community for months.
And into this maelstrom comes yet another Shapes variant – the ‘Light and Crispy’ range. I snapped up a box to see what they were like.
Well, you will remember some time ago when we started on this whole ‘savoury biscuit’ thing. At that time, I was nervous about the whole cross-over with ‘savoury snack’ thing. When does a biscuit become a snack? Well, it might just be with Light and Crispy Shapes, as these are definitely dipping a toe into the waters labelled ‘snack’, if not going for a full swim.
They are very light (which, I suppose, given the name is hardly a bad thing), thin, crunchy ‘biscuits’. Yes, the packet still has them labelled as ‘biscuits’. So that’s OK then. You can very easily shovel several at a time into your mouth, which to me is a definite sign of ‘snack’. And when you eat them, they crunch down quite quickly.
For all that, they have a nice enough texture, and the sour cheese and chive is pretty standard for the genre. Nothing stand-out, but quite pleasant. As a snack. I’m going to give these four out of ten.
Arnott’s Chicken Drumstick Shapes
July 13, 2016 at 16:04 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, artificial, biscuit, chicken, cola bottle, savoury, shapes, snack
Another day, another savoury snack biscuit to try. These are Chicken Drumstick flavour, although they are unaccountably shaped like cola bottles.
Arnott’s make quite a variety of Shapes, in all sorts of, erm shapes. And flavours – although many of the flavours kind of blur into each other. Truly I think if they switch round the packaging not that many people would notice – ‘chicken’ flavour tastes much like ‘BBQ’ flavour tastes much like ‘pizza’ flavour and so on.
This makes for somewhat problematic reviewing. I mean, a strawberry Tim Tam is clearly quite a different beast to a mint one, so there’s plenty to say. But for these – well, it gets a bit harder. They are a savoury snack biscuit. They are too salty, taste rather artificial, and are very addictive. Oh, and they have flavour you can see. Whatever that means.
To be honest, I’d steer clear of the whole regular Shapes thing, and go with the ‘
Extreme‘ range (which actually aren’t ‘extreme’ at all, just more tasty).
I’m going to give these a four out of ten.
Postscript
I wrote this post before I realised that Arnott’s had revamped their whole shapes line – to considerable controversy! Anyway, this review is now somewhat historical, as this is one of the flavours that was discontinued. I intend to come back to the Great Shapes Controversy very soon!
Arnott’s Letter Jumbles
August 9, 2015 at 18:53 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, arrowroot, biscuit, educational, kids, letter jumbles, snack
Well, that was a surprise. I opened the kitchen cupboard to find something for the kids to eat, and discovered a new and hitherto unknown Arnott’s biscuit.
Like that other scholarly biscuit in the Arnott’s range, these are evidently designed to assuage parental guilt about sugary kids snacks. Hey, they’re educational!
They are also exclusive to Woolworths, I note. It seems this is a growing trend. I hope Arnott’s also make some biscuits ‘exclusive to small corner shops‘ and the like, rather than just our grocery behemoths. I think that would be nice.
So what are Letter Jumbles? Well, they are small biscuits with letters on. They are actually tiny Milk Arrowroot, and seem to be exactly the same recipe as their larger brethren. As well as being smaller, though, they are also a little bit thinner, which yields a slightly crunchier texture.
I opened just one small packet for the junior Chillikebab’s to share, and it contained eight biscuits. Thankfully, it contained an ‘E’ and an “B’, so both the little darlings were both able to have the first letter from their name. I assume all the letters are equally represented, although this would take some significant research to verify.
All in all not bad, but all that packaging for so few biscuits seems a bit over the top. Why can’t parents just buy a regular pack of Milk Arrowroots, and put one or two of them into a kids lunchbox, perhaps wrapped in a little twist of greaseproof paper? And for that matter, why don’t we still wear flat caps, and why do school children have to wear shoes, and why aren’t kids allowed to clean chimneys any more, at least on the weekends?
I’m going to give these four out of ten. Bah Humbug.
Shapes – Barbecue
February 16, 2014 at 13:30 | Posted in biscuits | 1 CommentTags: Arnott's, barbecue, biscuit, flavour, see, shapes, snack
Is this a step too far, I wonder? I have begged your indulgence to write about savoury biscuits, and you have responded magnificently,with an overwhelming response asking for cheesy reviews. But this? Sold in a bag, and clearly not meant for putting with a cheeseboard? Well, dear readers, let me know what you think as we step into the dangerous waters of the savoury snack biscuit.
There are a number of things about these that Arnott’s are very keen you should know. Firstly, they are ‘baked not fried’. Well that’s alright then. Clearly slathering fat all over something and then putting it in the oven, rather than merely dipping it into hot oil is to be applauded. After all, potatoes baked in duck fat are practically a health food.
The other thing is that they have ‘flavour you can see’. This seems strange to me. Personally I prefer flavour you can taste. Maybe it’ one of those post-modern things, like paintings you can hear. I looked at the flavour long and hard, but didn’t really get any hint of barbecue – more pencil shavings or bits from the dust-pan. Nothing to suggest burned sausages or parrafin lighter fluid.
To eat, though, you do get some flavour. It seems the flavour is not just for looking at after all. The biscuit is crunchy and quite OK texture-wise. The flavour is of the generic ‘barbecue’ type, which is to say it really has very little to do with barbecues, and a whole lot to do with monosodium glutamate. Salty, spicy and slightly sweet tasting with a chemical edge that strips your tongue. Oh, and very addictive. The packet will be gone in a flash.
Of course, they are terrible. Artificial, gimmicky and lacking all depth and subtlety, But, for all that, they do deliver on expectations for the genre.
I’m going to give them a four out of ten.
Sultana Fruit Slice
July 10, 2011 at 14:17 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, biscuit, fruit, garibaldi, healthy, right, slice, snack, sultana, swashbuckling
The Snack Right Sultana Fruit Slice. A biscuit that reminds us of Italian feats of derring do; of swashbuckling adventures on the high seas, a handsome hero entering into battle and overthrowing tyrannical monarchies, stealing the hearts of beautiful women along the way and being feted by society figures across the world.
You don’t get all of that? Well, you should, as the Snack Right Sultana Fruit Slice is a Garibaldi biscuit, plain and simple. I don’t know why the Garibaldi name never caught on in Australia, but the combination of lots of sultanas squashed between two layers of soft biscuit is a classic, right down to the large slabs it comes in, with each slab being marked into five pieces for home disassembly.
The strange thing about this biscuit is that Arnott’s make another very similar product, but one that is not marked as ‘Snack Right’. Kind of ‘Snack Wrong’, if you will. And indeed, the Snack Right product is the better of the two; juicier sultanas, a more structured, moreish biscuit and it seems better for you too.
Go and grab a red cape and sword and give them a go. They are really rather good. I’m going to give these a nine out of ten. (And don’t miss the chocolate coated version either).
TeeVee Snacks Original
July 3, 2011 at 11:32 | Posted in biscuits | Leave a commentTags: Arnott's, battery operated, chocolate, irregular, selection, snack, teevee
Today we look at the Original TeeVee snacks, as opposed to the wafer version we looked at previously. They consist of small, crunchy biscuits covered in milk chocolate. The major excitement is that each biscuit is a different shape; there are dozens of different ones that defied all my attempts at categorisation.
I notice from the packet that the name ‘Tee Vee’ is trademarked. I wonder how far Arnott’s have gone to secure that trademark internationally; as it also appears to be the name of a Chinese manufacturing company that manufactures, amongst other things, beauty items, massagers and ‘battery operated items’. Hmmmm. I may never look at a TeeVee snack in the same way again.
For all that, they are quite nice; the biscuit is nothing special but they are quite chompable, and I can see that they would go down well whilst watching a movie or something. I’m going to give these a solid seven out of ten.
Sultana Choc
November 16, 2010 at 18:41 | Posted in biscuits | 2 CommentsTags: Arnott's, biscuit, chocolate, flies, healthy, snack, squashed, sultana
One should always be slightly suspicious of biscuits that claim to be healthy. The whole point of a biscuit is that it is not healthy, but is a treat. The fruit slice range fro Arnott’s, however, are labelled ‘low GI’ and are part of the ‘Snack Right’ range (but kudos to Arnott’s for resisting the oh-so-modern temptation to label them ‘snak rite‘).
The first thing you notice when you open them is that there are only four biscuits in a pack, with each biscuit coming in at a whopping 20cm long. I have to say I approve of this; it allows me to eat half a packet whilst legitimately claiming that ‘I only had two’.
Each biscuit is divided into five sections, and it has been suggested that the idea is that one breaks them off one at a time – yielding twenty small biscuits. This is clearly nonsensical; the dividing lines are purely ornamental as evidenced by the fact that when you break them apart they often fail to separate cleanly along the joins.
The biscuit is fairly soft, almost cake-like, and really only serves to bind together a large quantity of sultanas. They are then topped with a generous coating of milk chocolate.
And they are very good. Very good indeed. Ignore the warning bells that go off when you see the health claims on the packet because these are yummy. The soft biscuit and abundance of fruit lends a seasonal air to the Sultana Choc, and then the chocolate topping adds an additional indulgence. It’s very very easy to eat a whole packet of these. And who can possibly say that eating four biscuits is over indulging? Especially when they are good for you.
I’d give these a nine and a half out of ten. I’ve even been known to choose these over the awesome Mint Slice, especially when I’m hungry and fancy something a bit more substantial to eat. A top-notch effort from Arnott’s.
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