A nice cup of afternoon tea can always use a good biscuit to go with it. No… I do not mean an American dinner biscuit that is soft and chewy, or one that you pour gravy over. I mean a real English biscuit (translation: cookie!)

But an English biscuit is better than just a “cookie”. It is usually made with real butter – often with whole wheat or rolled oats. Sometimes they are adorned with a bit of chocolate, other times, with a bit of ginger.

The best brand of tea biscuit to look for is McVities. They are well known for their “Digestives” a lovely, flaky, whole wheat biscuit that comes plain, or topped with milk chocolate or dark chocolate.

But McVities offers more than just “Digestives”. They have a “Rich Tea Biscuit” made with real butter, “Custard Cremes” which come the closest to cookies from the US (two biscuits layered with a creamy center), and even a lovely crunchy biscuit called “Garibaldi” that has small currents baked into the biscuit.

Other varieties of biscuits include Borders Biscuits , Bolands and one of my other favorites, Foxes (“Ginger Crunch Creams”)

Now, if you’d rather go a bit Australian, look for Arnotts Biscuits or “Tim Tams”. But I must warn you, there is a particular technique for eating a Tim-Tam with tea (or, so I am told from an Australian friend)

Tim-Tams are very airy, layered with creamy filling and covered completely in chocolate. The “proper” way to eat one with your cup of tea is to gently bite off each end of the biscuit. Then in one skilled move, you put one end in you tea and sip – like through a straw until you get a nice taste of tea. Then you quickly and cleanly pull the whole biscuit into your mouth before it melts and turns into mush. Have a napkin ready! This takes a lot of skill and practice.

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