These don't taste basic! (Sainsbury's Basics Digestive Biscuits)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Sainsbury's Basics Digestive Biscuits
Date:	22/02/09 (100 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Taste lovely, as good as the more expensive brands, good for decorating

Disadvantages: A little smaller than other brands of digestive

My nine year old granddaughter wanted to do some cooking at the weekend but I didn't want all the cleaning up afterwards. I decided to get some biscuits and let her ice them and decorate them with sweets, I knew she'd enjoy that and it meant a nice snack and not too much washing up afterwards.

I had cocoa and icing sugar in the cupboard as well as some silver balls (tooth-crackers!), marzipan, mini marshmallows and various shades of food colouring. All I needed to buy really was biscuits and as my brother and his wife were visiting that evening I decided I might as well buy plenty of biscuits so my granddaughter could serve them out after we'd eaten.

I knew the toppings were going to be exceedingly sweet so digestive were the only choice really, I saw the Basics Digestives and decided to take the plunge as I reasoned that even if the biscuits weren't so good you'd be pressed to tell under the three tonne of sugar my granddaughter was planning to coat them with!

They cost just 30p a packet and are a very tasty digestive in their own right. They don't echo the moister, more crumbly McVities Digestives but they come pretty damned close and have a delicious wheaty flavour which I think veers towards being sweeter than a McVities but no less tasty. They are slightly drier in consistency but not so much as to leave you with a dry mouth after eating, indeed I find they melt in my mouth much better than I had originally thought they would. I dunked one in a cup of tea and was disappointed to find it crumbled into my cup a little, after that I didn't dunk another as I hate bits in my tea and anyway it didn't soak up the flavour of the tea as well as other biscuits.

The biscuits are smaller than other more expensive digestive and slightly stockier, the biscuit itself is denser than other brands though and this makes them all the more substantial to eat. They were perfect for my granddaughter's decorations and no-one guessed they were actually very cheap biscuits, it's one of those products that you want to take out of the cheap and nasty orange packaging as soon as possible and then you can pass them off as branded biscuits!

I am going to make cheesecake using these biscuits as a base next week, they will mix nicely with some butter to create a lovely flavoured base which will crumble just perfectly I think. I think these are great for their price, actually they're great biscuits overall and could easily justify a higher price tag. I've eaten Tesco Value Digestives before and didn't find them half as tasty as these and soon resorted back to buying the very expensive McVities, I'll still buy those occasionally but these Basics Digestives are perfect alternatives for a cheaper everyday biscuit.

Summary: Why spend a fortune on McVities when for 30p you can have excellent biccies?