11 novembre 2006

when the french do english, or i love it when you talk LU

so i saw these cookies at star when i stopped by a couple days ago, because of course the cookies are on the way to the vegetables. i passed by the cheese nips, oreos, fig newtons, and was almost home free when i saw...digestive biscuits for $2.39. do you know how much real digestive biscuits from england cost? $4/package, at least $1 too much for me to justify consuming them at the rate at which i would like to consume them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. consequently, when i saw these, i had to try them. i figure it's one for the team (of digestive biscuit lovers residing in places other than england).

LU is a french company that makes the petit ecolier cookies, which i love - my parents used to buy them when i was a kid, so life without LU cookies is a cruel and hostile world. but they don't often come out with new varieties of cookie that i really want - case in point, the raspberry and lime pims cookies. some american executive at LU made that decision, for sure. so the french version of tastes kind of like...a french take on a british mainstay. they taste a little like a lighter version of le petit beurre cookies (think aero chocolate bars v. regular chocolate bars, but for cookies), with milk chocolate on top. and i wonder if these were also dreamt up by americans, because the milk chocolate is too milky - not even the milk chocolate on british digestive biscuits tastes so much of condensed milk.

however, as a cookie in general the digestive is really quite nice - the mildness of the cookie is balanced by the sweetness of the chocolate. (i would not, however, recommend dunking them in your tea/coffee/hot chocolate like the LU website advises you to do - it would simply make the cookie distintegrate into the given hot liquid). as a digestive biscuit, though, it misses the mark on every count but the appearance. the wonderful thing about digestive biscuits is the texture of the cookie - in which you can taste how coarsely the flour/grain was ground. (kind of tricks you into thinking you're eating something healthy, and forgetting that there's a layer of chocolate on top of your cookie.) the flour that the digestive cookies use is completely different from the real thing - i believe it's just regular refined white flour. i would prefer a dark chocolate on my digestive biscuits, and i'm surprised that LU didn't use dark chocolate, since dark chocolate seems such a french thing to do. also, as an eating experience, i hate it when milk chocolate melts on my fingers from cookies (from chocolate bars it's somehow ok) and this milk chocolate seems to melt especially fast.

but for $2.39, i'll take it.

p.s. "i love it when you talk LU" refers to the section of the LU website where you can learn how to pronounce the names of their cookies. and if this is kind of hilarious: http://www.jemarretequandjeveux.com (je m'arrete quand je veux).