Snack Review: Tim Tams
Dear Australian expats living in America. Has something been missing from your life? Something creamy, chocolaty, and delightfully rectangular? Something, perhaps, by the name of Tim Tam?! Well, rejoice! Because, as of this winter, Tim Tams are taking up temporary residence in the United States!
That’s right. In its great beneficence, the Campbell’s Soup Company, which owns Australian cookie producer Arnott’s, is releasing Tim Tams through Pepperidge Farm (which it also owns, because Campbell’s Soup is a huge corporation). These tempting treats are big on the cocoa, consisting of two chocolate wafers injected with chocolate cream and surrounded by a chocolate coating. And since they’ve been a favorite among Aussies for nearly four decades (Arnott’s claims to sell 35 million packages each year), they’re coming to America with a serious reputation to uphold.
As a Tim Tam virgin, I had no idea what to expect from these cookies. Sure, their ingredients sounded good, but did they have that certain X factor that makes me want to live off them? I’d experienced this feeling with a non-American cookie only once before, with the United Kingdom’s Hobnobs, and I wasn’t sure the ‘Tams were going live up to their tasty example. (As a side note, I have to ask, what is up with the cutesy two syllable cookie names? Are there any American cookie brands that do this, or is it just a British/former British colony sort of thing?)
Anyway, I have to say Tim Tams are a bit too sweet to steal the title of “My Favorite Foreign Cookie” from Hobnobs, but they came damn close. The chocolate layer around the wafers was thick and smooth, and the inside cream tasted like homemade chocolate frosting (light, sweet, slightly grainy). I’m not a huge wafer person, but overall, the cookies made a yummy mouthful. I mean, of course they did, right? A cookie with 40 years of Australian staying power isn’t going to taste like cardboard.
However, what I really wanted to try out was the Tim Tam Slam, as demonstrated in the YouTube video How to successfully do a Tim Tam Slam. Simply dunk a Tim Tam into hot coffee (or chocolate, or brandy), suck liquid through its waferous body, and then slam it into your quivering mouth. I believe the Australians perform this ritual during major holidays… and also when they’re bored and have nothing else to do.
The results? Oh man. Wicked, wicked awesome. While I’d give Tim Tams an overall score of 7.5, the Tim Tam Slam is a 9. The coffee softened the cookie into a delicious, chocolate mush that completely melted in my mouth. No wonder the Tim Tam Slam is featured on the cookie’s Wikipedia page. The maneuver takes something that’s already great (like a pug), and makes it crazy great (like a pug in a top hat)!
So kiddos, if you’re partial to chocolate, you should definitely give these “biscuits” a try. Hopefully, Pepperidge Farm will soon catch up to Arnott’s and start producing dark chocolate Tim Tams. I can only imagine the bliss of a Tim Tam Dark Chocolate Slam.
2 Comments
andrea in Sydney on January 17th, 2009
How awesome is a Tim Tam Slam? I’m not a fan of dark chocolate, so I’ve never tried a Dark Choc Tim Tam slam, but I can say that the other varieties, even though they’re mostly very good biscuits, don’t make as good a Slam as the original.
Now, I would love to have a White Choc Tim Tam (hmmmm, can you imagine how good the slam would be?), which, in my 3 years in Oz, Arnott’s hasn’t gone to the trouble of making.
Linda on January 2nd, 2009
Like a pug in a top hat - I have to try that!
(The cookie, I mean - my pugs HATE to wear clothes.)