Angela Mollard: Why the humble biscuit need to come back into fashion

Forget faux-healthy slices and anything featuring dates rolled with nuts and coconut oil. When it comes to the perfect comfort snack nothing beats a bickie (but not the whole pack), writes Angela Mollard. Vote for your favourite in our poll.

Oh crumbs, I’m craving a ginger nut right now. I’ve been craving one all week.

Every time I’ve made a cup of tea which is at least twice a day I’ve thought: “You know what would go perfectly with this cup of tea?”

A gingernut. Or an Anzac biscuit.

But we don’t eat biscuits any more do we? The greatest known salve to any discomfort whether it be a broken heart, an awful diagnosis, a troublesome child, a tricky boss or just standard-issue menopause has long been a cup of tea and a biscuit. But you have to admit yourself to hospital or, failing illness, a two-star motel to get a shortbread or a custard cream these days.

Of course, you could buy a packet but guilted by health advice you’d be left feeling like a criminal and, besides, few of us want a whole packet. Just the one or two, right now.

The humble biscuit has long been the middle child of baked goods, falling between attention-seeking pastries, macarons and luxe donuts at the upper end and the earnest gut-worthy cacao, date and buckwheat bars at the other.

The Family Assorted are no more …

In the interests of longevity – with a side order of self-congratulation – I’ve been a huge fan of date and cashew concoctions over the last few years but fear I’ve reached peak date. I’ve blended them into balls, stuffed them with peanut butter and used them to make a “caramel” slice where the “caramel” was dates and coconut oil and not, sadly, my mum’s version with condensed milk.

Even a visit to my fellow columnist Frances Whiting’s home last year lamentably lacked a biscuit offering. Despite citing an Arnott’s delivery as the greatest freebie of her 25-year career, the turncoat did not profer a plate of Kingstons but some slice she’d made with bashed nuts, coconut and the dreaded dates. Safe to say I’m done with Medjools. They no longer make me drool. For all their worthiness they basically do the job of glue.

A plate of Tim Tams never goes astray.

Which is why we need to deal with the humble biscuit’s image problem. For a foodstuff that still takes up almost an entire aisle of the supermarket, biscuits have barely changed since I was a kid when the universal after-school snack was a glass of cordial and an Arrowroot.

Apparently, there was a surge in consumption during the pandemic which experts put down to stockpiling and lack of access to café fare but which I believe was simply a fear response. Frankly, if you were going to be wiped off the planet by a rogue virus why would you NOT binge on Tim Tams and fistfuls of Monte Carlos before the inevitable.

Anyway, most of us got through it and now we’re back on our biscuit bans which must be enormously dispiriting to all those lovely people at Arnotts who have watched as muesli bars and protein balls and cauliflower bites have grabbed their market share with the same stealth the pilates industry crushed aerobics instructors.

But just as there are days when you don’t want to contract your core but knock out an old-school grapevine step to Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot, so there is nothing that quite takes the biscuit like a biscuit. Witness the outrage when Arnotts discontinued three products without warning over the past 18 months, leaving fans bereft that they could no longer get their Lattice biscuits, Honey Jumbles and the Classic Assorted pack.

And they were the rubbish ones. Imagine if they did away with Butternut Snaps which are excellent on their own or as a base for cheesecakes and banoffee pie.

For those of us raised on Enid Blyton and her delightful sounding Pop Biscuits and Google Buns, there is a movement growing to protect #GrannyFood. And while I’m all for a Society for the Protection of Corn Relish I think the way forward for our bikkie bosses is not to bury their head in a vat of flour, sugar and hydrogenated fat but to repackage and repurpose our old favourites. One Sydney chef has already given them a head start by upcycling a couple of Jatz crackers with smoked butter and anchovy fillets, charging $10 for the “innovative-yet-unpretentious” starter. I’d love to buy a box of Jatz with a list of 10 “innovative-yet-unpretentious” toppings printed on the back.

Just as Jatz is special because it hasn’t been jazzed up into an artisanal seeded offering, so our best bickies need to trade on their OG factor. Scotch Fingers, Iced VoVos and Caramel Crowns – though I prefer New Zealand’s superiorly titled Toffee Pops – are the Original Gangsters of the baking world but if they’re to survive they need to find a new audience via social media. Tic Tocs, those funny clock face biscuits, could partner with TikTok and if Gigi Hadid can make a basic pasta recipe go viral, imagine what she might do with a Malt ‘O’ Milk and some posh ice cream.

I’m desperate not to see our cookies crumble but, in the meantime, will someone sell me a single gingernut. Or two.