McVitie's Milk Chocolate and Orange Digestives

...UK's favourite biscuit in the McVitie's "Dunk for Britain" poll.

The chocolate digestive was first baked in 1925 and little has changed since. Immediately popular, it has stayed that way for eighty years, and there were apparently more than 70 million packs of chocolate digestives sold in the UK in 2004, suggesting that every member of the population has eaten a chocolate digestive at some point in the last twelve months.
...and the recent introduction of McVitie's Milk Chocolate and Orange Digestives to the market provides even more of a decision to be made.

I'm not someone with much of a sweet tooth, so biscuits aren't usually a part of my regular shopping. On the rare occasion I do indulge myself, I prefer the plain chocolate digestives to the milk chocolate ones. That said, I'm a big fan of citrus fruits, so when I first laid eyes on these new biscuits, ... more

The digestive biscuit. First invented in 1839, and so named because the recipe contained bicarbonate of soda and it was supposed to help the digestive system, it was still going strong in 2004 when it was voted the UK's favourite biscuit in the McVitie's "Dunk for Britain" poll.

The chocolate digestive was first baked in 1925 and little has changed since. Immediately popular, it has stayed that way for eighty years, and there were apparently more than 70 million packs of chocolate digestives sold in the UK in 2004, suggesting that every member of the population has eaten a chocolate digestive at some point in the last twelve months.

The choice in chocolate digestives has always been fairly simple. You can have it with either milk chocolate or plain chocolate, or just stick to the normal digestive. That was true until recently when the Caramel Chocolate Digestive appeared and offered a slightly more decadent choice and the recent introduction of McVitie's Milk Chocolate and Orange Digestives to the market provides even more of a decision to be made.

I'm not someone with much of a sweet tooth, so biscuits aren't usually a part of my regular shopping. On the rare occasion I do indulge myself, I prefer the plain chocolate digestives to the milk chocolate ones. That said, I'm a big fan of citrus fruits, so when I first laid eyes on these new biscuits, I just had to give them a try.

Surprisingly for a biscuit, there's a whiff of orange, although you do need to have your nose pretty close to the biscuit to find it. But, let's face it; no-one buys a packet of biscuits just to sniff them, do they? If you are the kind of person that does that, and research has shown that you can get the same emotional lift from smelling chocolate as from eating it, let the biscuits get a little warm, as the orange flavour is strongest at room temperature, rather than at pantry temperature.

The same is true of the taste. The ideal way to be eating these biscuits is after they've warmed to room temperature and the chocolate melts easily under your fingers. When this happens, you really do get to taste the orange in the chocolate layer. There's not as much of an orange flavour as in a Terry's Chocolate Orange, although it does seem a little less sickly after a few, thanks to the savoury combination of the digestive.

I'm not normally a fan of the milk chocolate digestive, and would prefer these to be in a plain chocolate variant which, depending on their success, may yet follow. For someone without a sweet tooth, these can get a little too much if you eat too many, which I usually do. The digestive can leave your mouth feeling a little dry after a while and you do need to have something to hand to wash them down with. While the combination of the dry biscuit and chocolate balances out well to start with, after a few the tastes almost seem to separate in the mouth, leaving a dryness from the digestive and a slightly sickly feeling from eating so much milk chocolate. Of course, for people with a degree of self-control I don't possess, this wouldn't be a problem

I tend to eat my chocolate digestives, whichever topping I've chosen, chocolate side down. This is the best way to get the full combination of sweet and savoury flavours, as eating them chocolate side up gives you a tongue full of digestive and I find that the full impact of the chocolate hits the roof of my mouth rather than my tongue. That seems to be a worse idea with these biscuits than with the ordinary chocolate digestives, as the digestive seems a blander and more crumbly in this variety and needs the balance of the chocolate a little more.

Incidentally, in the interests of balanced research, I did try to lick the chocolate off the top to get a better idea of the flavouring of the milk chocolate and orange combination without the mixture with the digestive getting in the way. Unfortunately, the crumbly nature of the digestive itself meant that all I ended up with was a white t-shirt that needed a wash and a carpet in need of vacuuming.

If you're a fan of diets, these should be avoided. I'm not watching my weight, but I'm finding them so irresistible that I may soon well be and at nearly 4g of fat per biscuit, these will have to be a treat rather than a regular occurrence. Those with dietary allergies will need to be careful, with them containing both wheat and dairy ingredients.

But if these are not concerns of yours and if you're a fan of chocolate and orange, as I am, you're likely to enjoy their combination with biscuit here, even if the biscuit is the weak link. They're a bit more expensive than their milk or plain chocolate cousins, at £1.05 for a 300g pack in Tesco and Sainsbury's, as opposed to £1.04 for a 400g pack of their more established competition. My local corner shop carries them for £1.00, which still makes them worse value than the regular chocolate digestives, but in my opinion the taste of the chocolate and orange combination more than makes up for their relative lack of value. I'm hoping they're here to stay as, although they vanish from the packet faster than is good for me, I'm not sure I could happily return to regular chocolate digestives if they were to vanish from the shops just as quickly. 

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