Tim Tam Taste Test

Tim Tams are delicious Australian biscuits (cookies) made by the Arnotts company.  I was first introduced to these in Papua New Guinea by Australians who love them.  And then coming back to the US I found that you could buy Tim Tams here.  While they use to have only a limited distribution, these yummy cookies can now be bought at World Market, Target and Walmart.  They are made by Pepperidge Farms (an Arnotts sister company) and the question was raised whether or not the US version was as good as the Australian version.  Could we even tell the difference?Ryan brought back boxes of Tim Tams from his last Australia trip (it was a good use of his second free checked bag:-) so all we had to do was buy a pack here in America.  The Australian biscuit is pictured on the left and the US version on the right.  They look very similar, have similar ingredients (although the US version has a little more sugar) and on first examination, we didn’t know if anyone would even be able to tell the difference.So the idea was to try a quarter of each cookie without knowing if you were eating the US or Australian version.  6 of us did the test.  And the final results were two of the testers (the youngest two) chose the American version while the other 4 all chose the Australian biscuit.  There was a lot of thinking as well as discussion afterwards on what differences we could or couldn’t taste.  One tester could taste the difference in sugar content.  Another thought they tasted pretty much the same.  I personally think the chocolate was very similar but the texture of the cookie insides were what made the difference for me.  I found the US inside wafers were a little more porous and flaky while the Australian version was just a touch denser.  Enough to taste a difference.The final result is that the original from Australia are indeed better.  If you were offered a choice, the Australian version should be your pick.  However, the US version does a passably good job if you can’t make it to Australia and they will still make a delicious Tim Tam Slam (pictures and directions coming soon!).  This was a fun test and I would be happy to add some more tests to our data set in the future.  However, I am convinced that the Australian Tim Tams would continue to win.