Scientists invent biscuit to slam dunk teatime rivals

IT’S the way the cookie crumbles. Food scientists have devised the first biscuit that will not fall apart when dunked.

Dipping a biscuit in a steaming cup of tea may be a great British ritual, but there are few things more frustrating than watching a digestive disintegrate.

Help is now at hand for biscuit lovers, however. Researchers have developed a finger-shaped chocolate-topped biscuit with the perfect shape, ingredients and texture for dunking.

The biscuits can be dipped into a cup of tea for up to 2.3 seconds and still keep their flavour and shape.

Months of work went into developing the new product, putting it packet-to-packet with other biscuits including ginger nuts, digestives, rich tea, Chocolate Hobnobs and custard creams.

Extensive testing revealed that the ideal tea temperature for the best dunk was 70C.

Harriet Gregory, biscuit developer for Marks & Spencer, which will be selling the "Dunking Cookies" at its 375 UK stores, said: "This is more than an everyday biscuit. It’s indulgent - for those who really want something special.

"The round shape of biscuits such as ginger nuts makes them difficult to dunk because they have a large surface area and tend to disintegrate rapidly. Also their shape makes it hard to fit in the mug.

"Our cookies are thick, unlike some, such as rich tea, which fall apart because they are thin.

"The chocolate in our cookies glues them together so they don’t disintegrate. They also have chocolate chips inside them which taste great when they melt during dunking.

"Millions of people like to dunk their biscuits in a hot drink like tea or coffee. We’re banking on them being a hit with young people who particularly like to dunk."

It was found that the optimum dunking time, 2.3 seconds, would get the maximum taste out of the biscuit but avoid it crumbling.

Ms Gregory said some other biscuits might survive a longer dunk, but quickly lost their taste.

An independent expert, Stuart Payne, from the cult website www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com, which reviews all the latest biscuit releases, hailed the cookies as a success. He said: "For us, the clincher has to be the taste. It’s so easy to overdo chocolate but these manage to pull off the rare feat of spoiling you with chocolatey richness whilst letting the buttery sweet flavour of the cookie play its part."

After personally analysing its suitability for dunking, he said: "The sensible finger shape used means that dunking is made easy no matter how dainty your drinking vessel. We found that these cookies were not prone to crumbling like their more traditional round brethren, aided no doubt by the layer of milk chocolate on their base. This is a very important feature for any dunking biscuit, preventing unwanted build-up of bottom sludge.

"We found that they held up to the rigours of immersion in steaming hot tea amazingly well, but would probably recommend leaving your tea to cool slightly for the optimum melted chocolate viscosity."

Mr Payne, whose personal favourite biscuits are McVities Abbey Crunch, added: "The dunking of chocolate biscuits and cookies, once frowned upon, is becoming ever more acceptable."

Catherine Paterson, a senior manager at Northern Foods, which manufactures the M&S biscuits, confirmed: "We came up with a recipe that could withstand dunking."

Explaining why the biscuit works, Ms Paterson said: "It absorbs the liquid instead of disintegrating. We wanted to come up with a biscuit that could outdunk the others.

"For some people, dunking a biscuit is a comfort thing."

In 1998, Dr Len Fisher, of Bristol University, revealed that flipping a biscuit over after dunking stopped it from disintegrating. Dr Fisher also found that "more of the flavour of the biscuit is released into our mouths if it has first been dunked in a hot drink".

Dr Fisher’s research showed that the most effective method for dunking was to dip the biscuit into the drink at as shallow an angle as possible.

He won the Ignoble prize for physics in 1999 for his work on dunking biscuits. The prize is awarded for a piece of science that makes people laugh as well as making them think.