Worry no more – as the Cookie Catcher is here to save the day!

We’ve recently been asked to review the perfect problem-solver for the world’s dunkers, and our review “hardware” arrived this morning. Keen to give this a try, our gallant team of tea dunkers stuck the kettle straight on, broke out the biccies, and gave it a try…

The Cookie Catcher Unwrapped

Cookie Catcher Review

It’s a cup-shaped net designed to be inserted into your favourite mug once the tea’s been prepared. Slide it into the cup of tea, and dunk away, knowing that if you have a mug mishap, those pesky biscuit bits can be removed by lifting out the Catcher using the handy piece of string, put it to one side, and drinking away.

We tried it with two cups of tea, and two biccies – well, our team are on new Year diets, so we can’t use this product review as an excuse to pig a packet of Chocolate Hobnobs each… sadly. In our tests, we found that the Cookie Catcher does indeed do what it says on the colourful packaging, and makes an excellent net for catching the biscuit residue and stopping it from spoiling your cuppa.

Dunking a Maryland Cookie with Cookie Catcher

The Cookie Catcher does reduce the size of your cup, and therefore does impose a limit on the diameter of biscuit that can be dunked. Maximum dunking width appears to be around 60mm, which presented not problem for our 48mm wide Maryland Cookie, or a 54mm Ginger Nut. A larger diameter biscuit, such as a Hobnob, may present more of a problem, but nothing that a snap won’t solve.

Under our controlled tests, the Cookie Catcher behaved well, with no incidents to report. A small amount of residue did make it through the Catcher’s net, but not enough to cause a problem, and after a quick re-stir, dissolved nicely to make for a slightly sweeter cuppa.

Crumbs Caught by Cookie Catcher

Once a successful accident recovery operation has been completed, the Catcher can be rinsed out and reused.

Our Cookie Catcher Experiment

We thought, as it was a quiet day, we’d record our experience of dunking with the Catcher. Here is a short video showing how we got on with a Ginger Nut…

You can buy them online direct from www.thecookiecatcher.com, priced at just £2. Go on… you know you want one!

You may have though that the presence of a Tesco Minimart in every square mile of Britain would have spelt the end for the humble milkman, but today’s Milkie has gone all high-tech. Those little milk floats no longer deliver just milk, fruit juice, yoghurt and bread… They now deliver all sorts of things – crisps, dog food, cereals, cans of coke, cleaning products and around 250 assorted household foods and products.

Gone too are the days of leaving a note in your empty bottle, and making sure you’re in on a Friday to pick up the tab. Now, you set up your order online, and if you decide there’s something you want to add or remove, log on and edit. Provided you order by 9pm, you’ll find the goodies on the doorstep in the morning. You now pay monthly by credit card or direct debit, there’s no minimum order, and delivery is free

What does this mean for us tea dunkers?

Over 30 different types of milk, various packets of biscuits, teabags and sugar, are all part of the service offered by today’s morning milk delivery service. With Dairy Crest’s online service, Milk and More, you can get all of the basic requirements for a decent morning cuppa delivered to the door.

Two small downsides – the choice of dunkable biscuits is a little on the low side. In our area, chocolate or plain digestives are available, as is the good old custard cream. There are some tins of biscuits, “broken biscuits” (presumably squashed by a slow-moving float), plus shortbread fingers. No Hob Nobs or Bourbons (doing well in our Tea Dunking Biscuit Survey), but at least the top choice, Digestives, are available.

The other downside? No matter how many notes we leave, Peter, our milkie, won’t make us a morning cuppa. Shame!

Tea Dunking Raw Material, delivered to your door free

We’ve been trying out the new-look “Milk Delivery – The Next Generation”, and actually, we’re impressed. We’re still doing the weekly Big Shop, but instead of popping to Tess Coze for the emergency semi-skimmed, we’re now stumbling out of bed to find the early bird milkman (or is it milk person these days?), has had their morning cuppa, and delivered the raw ingredients for us bright and early.

If you want to try the next generation of milk deliveries, we’d suggest you click your mouse on this next bit – milkandmore.co.uk and try out the al-new way to get tea, coffee, milk, sugar, onions and bin-bags delivered im the morning… for free.

Please take 2 minutes to answer our short poll:

Take the Tea Dunking Survey

Results So Far:

Tea’s way out in front of coffee as the dunker’s drink of choice…

What drink do you dunk in?

What’s your favourite dunking biccie? So far, the plain digestive wins out…

Your votes on which biccie to dunk?

Red Alert? Had a dunking crisis? So have most dunkers, apparently…

Ever had a tea dunking accident?

Your comments

• It’s really nice to dunk but dont dunk for too long.
• I don’t like it, my biscuits always disintegrate and make my coffee lumpy. Dipping a quality chocolate biscuit just to melt the topping is o.k. but a full on dunk isn’t appealing unless maybe it’s a hard biscuit like a ginger nut.
• Just a glorious habit to have, nothing like a good old dunking, Hoorah for dunking…!
• Strong white builder’s tea with chocolate hob nobs please.
• Every now and then as a special treat I like to dunk a very hard ginger nut and suck the tea out of it then dunk it again repeatedly until it dissolves in my mouth.Oh Joy!!
• Tea tastes better after dunking
• I love dunking other biscuits too my second fav is custard creams,then rich tea.I love to dunk gingernuts in milk
• my grandma taught me to dunk. as a child i would dunk in my mothers tea. now i consider it a treat to dunk into a lovely hot cup of tea.
• I don’t think you’ve dunked enough biscuits. So far we’ve got Caramel Digestives way out in front with 87.5% (scoring a big round 10 for drop-off), Fox’s Ambers and Sainsburys Dark Choc Coated Ginger Cookies on 77.5% (both doing nicely in post-dunk texture), Joint third place goes to Fox’s Chinkie Chocolatey Cookies and both Tesco & Waitrose own brand Ginger Cookies, all having 72.5%.
• It’s what makes tea drinking a delicious experience
• It’s always polite to ask before dunking in somebody else’s tea
• Dunking in private is no harm rather enjoyable and should be encouraged.
• it is an experience like you would never believe

Take the Tea Dunking Survey

UK comedian Peter Kay’s had stuff to say on the subject of dunking the Rich Tea – He feels that they should be called “One Dips” – and recounts his childhood experience of dunking failures. For dipping, there’s only one biscuit man enough to do the job – Watch the following clip to find out…

Share and Enjoy!

• The Boat That Rocked – The scene where young Carl loses the girl, and is comforted by Harold and John.

Any other cinematic dunks come to mind? Please add a comment below…

The best book discussing the raw ingredients, tea and biscuits, is the rather sweet little “Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down“, pictured to the right.

Writted by Nicey and Wifey, this book weighs in at 179 pages. Here’s the blurb that’s offered up to support this tome:

“This wonderful new book is a celebration of that most British of life’s cornerstones: taking a break, putting your feet up and having a breather. There is, however, a third element that any perfect sit down requires and it is this: biscuits. As Nicey so rightly points out, a cup of tea without a biscuit is a missed opportunity. Finding the right biscuit for the right occasion is as much an art as it is a science, and it is a task that Nicey has selflessly worked on for most of his tea drinking life. From dunking to the Digestive, the Iced Gem to the Garibaldi, everything you’ll ever need to know about biscuits is in this book, and quite a lot more besides. Is the Jaffa Cake a cake or a biscuit? And have Wagon Wheels really got smaller since your childhood, or have you just got bigger? Unstintingly researched, Nicey and Wifey’s Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down does exactly what it says on the biscuit tin. So go on. Take a weight off, put the kettle on, and enjoy.”

So there – if that doesn’t encourage you to whip out your credit card and buy a copy immediately, then you’re just not taking tea dunking, or this website, seriously.

If you want to avail yourself of a copy, you can order it from Amazon.co.uk or your local book emporium for the price of two cups of tea and some biccies at a high street coffee shop.

Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down ISBN: 0751537659

This arcane art has been practiced for generations, handed down from enthusiast to expectant enthusiast for as long as these two noble comestibles have shared the same saucer. How the practice began is a secret long ago lost to the murky mists of time, but we all owe a silent and appreciative nod of thanks to the inspired alchemist who first dared to plunge his biscuit into a freshly-poured brew and reap the bountiful flavour benefits that resulted.

From Rich Teas to Bourbons, Digestives to Ginger Nuts, there is virtually no biscuit which cannot be improved by a judicious and carefully-calculated dunking.

And herein lies another attraction of this endlessly fascinating pastime: the element of danger, the fine, almost imperceptible line that every dunker walks between triumph and tragedy, delectation or defeat – get it just right and your biscuit is transformed into a flavoursome treat for the tongue; get it wrong and you’re left with a distasteful, unappetising sludge at the bottom of your teacup.

For the art of dunking biscuits in tea takes but a moment to learn, but a lifetime to master. What seems like a simple process reveals itself on further examination to be filled with subtle nuances. The seasoned dunker will take into account not just the type of biscuit being used, but also the temperature of the tea, the ambient temperature of the room, and even the brand of tea itself.

Some canny practitioners even go so far as to refrigerate their biscuits beforehand for maximum dunking time – many purists, however, feel that such tampering is a form of cheating, akin to soaking one’s chestnut in vinegar to harden it before a game of conkers.

In short, the art of dunking biscuits in tea has far more to it than first meets the eye. In the hands of an expert, biscuit-dunking can transform an already tasty treat into a true taste sensation, while a less experienced dunker can easily turn two separate delicacies into a single ruinous mess in one fell swoop.

While perhaps not for the faint-hearted, dunking biscuits in tea holds extraordinary rewards for those willing to put in the time and effort to perfect this sadly under-appreciated skill.

Dunking biscuits in tea is a discipline with a long and illustrious history, in many cases going all the way back to early adolescence. Although lacking the strictly codified rules of its Japanese cousin, tea dunking is an equally serious and some might even say spiritual tradition.

Whilst the theory behind the art of tea dunking is simple, its subtle complexities only really reveal themselves after years of patient practice. The secret to successful tea dunking lies in the bringing together of two essentially opposing elements to form a harmonious whole that is more than just the sum of its parts – much like the concepts of Yin and Yang in traditional Eastern philosophy.

On the one hand you have the hard crunchiness of the biscuit, many of which, such as Rich Tea and Digestives, are almost defined by their dryness. And on the other, there is the tea itself – a pleasingly astringent liquid beverage which flows in a rich, peaty stream from the pot.

The tea dunking practitioner strives to bring out the best in both of these seemingly conflicting comestibles by carefully combining them in such a way that the will allow the true hidden flavour potential that each secretly possesses to blossom on the tongue.

The process is difficult and highly esoteric. While the act of tea dunking itself may be child’s play, finding the optimal dunking technique is a highly skilled, highly intuitive art that few ever truly master. Each type of biscuit has its own distinct character which lends itself to a different dunking style, and, with no hard and fast rules to cling to, dunkers must rely on their own finely-honed instincts when it comes to determining just how long an individual biscuit should be dunked for.

True dunking devotees know that nothing worthwhile is ever gained without effort, and all will at some point have had to endure the catastrophe of biscuit breakage, when the dunked biscuit loses its form entirely and becomes entirely subsumed by the warm tea, leaving an unpleasant sludge at the bottom of the cup.

Practice and perseverance, however, do pay off, and the dunker will slowly find that he or she becomes more and more attuned to the unique characteristics of each biscuit they dunk. As their senses are slowly sharpened through a process of trial and error, they will come closer and closer to attaining the perfect, most flavoursome taste nirvana in the tranquillity of their own tea break.

These peerless pioneers have broken new ground in the art of dunking, experimenting with novel concoctions and combinations of comestibles in order to unearth previously undiscovered flavours and textures that no tongue has tasted before.

The proliferation of fruit and herbal teas in recent years has without doubt expanded the horizons of the more ambitious biscuit dunkers amongst us, but, for the truly adventurous, there are endless unfathomable depths of possibility out there just waiting to be plumbed one dunk at a time.

It’s important to remember that dunking biscuits need not be constrained to the confines of the teacup. It’s no great leap to plunge a random biscuit into a steaming cup of coffee instead – the mechanics are, after all, virtually the same – but how about dunking pink wafers into an ice cold vanilla milkshake? Or the spicy extravagance of dipping ginger nuts into a piping hot mug of Ribena?

To really get the most out of dunking biscuits, you have to think outside the tea caddy. Alcoholic beverages provide tremendous scope for the discerning dunker – from a festive feast of mulled wine and Christmas cake to the Celtic-flavoured pairing of Guinness and oatcakes, whole new vistas of dunking opportunities open up to those unafraid to learn new techniques and push their own personal envelope.

Dunking biscuits can be an endlessly rewarding pastime for those who are willing to let their creative curiosity run unbounded and throw caution to the wind in their search for new and exciting sensory experiences. Experimentation, improvisation and a disdain for convention are the key weapons in the arsenal of the seasoned dunker when it comes to discovering delicious new delights previously unknown to the human palate.

We asked AQA, the text message advice service, how dunking works. Their reply:

A hot drink causes the starch in a biscuit to swell, and the sugar to dissolve, speeding up breaking time. Milk makes drink three times slower to penetrate.

For more on the scientific formula for tea dunking, see the BBC News feature on this very subject.

Related links:

• Advanced Techniques for Biscuit Dunking