O.K. Because you, the public, demanded it - here's my Cake/Trades Description Act/Serving Suggestion Web Page!
Have you ever wondered why food manufacturers put pictures of their products on the outside of opaque packaging, rather than just letting you see through the wrapper to the product itself? The manufacturers would say that it allows them to display their products in a 'serving suggestion' or that by showing cross-sections they let you see what you cannot from the outside, like the inside of a pie.
How often have you (like me) been disappointed that the 'serving suggestion' depicted on the outside of the packet consists of the product being places on a miniature plate surrounded by dolls' house furniture and midgets.
Now's our chance to make a difference. I set out below six examples of the picture on the packaging and the reality. I think I have given all the products a fair chance, by shooting them from more or less the same angle, and making the cross-sectional cut in the same place. Funnily enough, the main difference I noticed was one of colour. I don't know whether this is just down to poor colour registration in the printing process, clever lighting, or retouching, but the products seem a lot blander in real life compared to in the packet illustrations.
Mr.Kipling's pies have a bad reputation for being almost hollow with a tiny bit of filling, but from the two examples I have shewn here, this is not the case at all. They are a little less full than the examples on the packets, but you could well believe that an ordinary packet has been opened and the best example chosen for the photo shoot. The pies, by the way, were delicious.
These go-ahead 'Fruit-ins' are just the thing if you want a crafty snack without wanting to appear
greedy. They are like fig rolls, although different flavours. Again they are nothing like the image
on the packet. Mainly this is because the biscuit is much dryer than the illustration, with much
of the filling having been absorbed into the biscuit. The filling is also much sparser than in the
picture, although to give McVitie the benefit of the doubt, the illustration on the wrapper could
be of the biscuits when they have just come out of the oven.
I know I said there were no cookies on this web site, but hey - I lied! Here is a Cookie Rolo, which has much more toffee and a much smaller bit of biscuit than in the picture. I think that the one pictured would be significantly better than what is inside the packet.
These Foxes Golden Crumble Creams are just magnificent biscuits. They are the sort of biscuits you should buy if
when the Queen comes to tea (She won't, but all her subjects seem to imagine she one day will).
However the cream filling is nowhere near as abundant as in the illustration. It's almost
overlapping the edges in the picture, whereas without an X-Ray camera you can't see it at all in
real life. What a con! The sad thing is that the biscuits themselves are so good, there's no need
for this deception. The best way to eat them is to take two apart, eat the plain biscuity bit from
each side, then put the two remainders together, cream bit to cream bit, and eat!
Finally, this brings us to Chocolate Caramel Digestives. A lovely idea, and they taste great too.
It's the same taste and texture combination in the Cookie Rolos, albeit in different proportions.
They are good, but the scrimping on the caramel is the height of meanness, when compared with
the picture.
Have you ever come across a biscuit/cake/sweet that failed to live up to the picture on the packet? Please mail me with details and it'll give me an excuse to buy some more biscuits and cakes and sweets for 'research' purposes. Alternatively, mail me gifs or jpgs of the offending articles and their packaging. Please try to match the angle of photography and position of cross- sectional slice if at all possible - we want to be fair.