This week's Shopping Trolley Hotline is going to help you decide which biscuits you should have in your kitchen press.
Newstalk's Simon Tierney took up the Custard Cream challenge for The Hard Shoulder.
Three various brands of the biscuit, which originated in 1908 from Huntley and Palmer, were taste-tested:
- Boland's Custard Creams - €1.50 for 150g
- Supervalu Custard Creams - 75c for 400g
- Tesco Custard Creams - 73c for 400g
"What's more important than the price differential is that with the two own-brand products, you're getting double the amount of biscuits," Simon said.
"In fact you are getting - I think - 38 biscuits in the own-branded products, and you're only getting 18 in the other one".
Simon said the colour is one of the major differences you notice.
"I found that with the branded product, Boland's, it's quite a deeper colour," he said.
"The Tesco is a much paler colour, so you can see there's a difference in the ingredients in the dough.
"The other big difference for me... is the quality of the markings".
Custard cream biscuits on a plate. Picture by: Leon Woods / Alamy Stock PhotoHost Kieran Cuddihy agreed: "The pattern on the biscuit on the Boland's is the most clearly defined - by a long, long way.
"There's actually more detail as well on the pattern," he said.
Taste test
Kieran branded the Boland's as "delicious", and suggested there were some differences with the Supervalu brand.
"This is more crumbly, there was more snap in the Boland's," he said.
"I think the Boland's was a little bit tastier than Supervalu.
"The Supervalu and the Tesco are most alike in taste and texture.
"The Boland's - it is the more expensive product - it is a superior product.
"If all prices were equal, I think I'd be buying it," Kieran added.
Simon said he also noticed another difference.
"The thing that I felt with the Boland's is I found the cream filling a smoother taste experience," he said.
"With the two own-branded products, I could feel the granular sugar in the cream - with the Boland's product it was a much smoother cream.
'No custard in the middle'
On the actual biscuit itself, Simon said he's been wrong all this time.
"I always thought that Custard Cream, structurally, was built around custard in the middle but I was wrong," he said.
"What's in the middle is the cream part and the custard is actually built in to the dough of the biscuit.
"They mix the buttercream and the custard together, with the flour, and that's where the custard part of the Custard Cream is.
"There's no custard in the middle," he added.
Listen back here:
