Tim Tam Slam

Australia may not be world renowned for its culinary achievements (yet), but there is one delicious food item that Australia has gifted to the world:  the Tim Tam!

The Tim Tam is to Australia what the Oreo is to the USA:  the most popular packaged cookie/biscuit and an iconic brand.  Invented in 1958 by Arnott’s – a large Australian biscuit company – the Tim Tam is actually named after the horse that won the 1958 Kentucky Derby, which in turn was named after a dog.  I shit you not.

The original Tim Tam consists of a layer of chocolate cream filling sandwiched between two chocolate biscuits, then covered with a thin layer of milk chocolate.

Other staple varieties include Classic Dark Chocolate, White Chocolate, Chewy Caramel, and Double Coat (which has extra chocolate around the outside!)  Other varieties come and go, and there’s always a handful of fun flavours to choose from at any time.  Currently, Tim Tam has their “Sweet Wishes” line of flavours which includes Double Chocolate Caramel, Honeycomb, and Turkish Delight, and a separate dark chocolate range including Mint, Rum & Raisin, and another Classic Dark which might be the same as the normal Classic Dark but with different packaging.  I’ll have to buy a pack of each to find out.

Now, I’ve been eating Tim Tams since I arrived in Australia, because, you know, why not?  During the month of June, however, I probably doubled or tripled my lifetime Tim Tam intake.  Why?  Because Della and Eric were here.  And Della and Eric took a liking to the Tim Tams.  So, we bought a bunch of varieties and ate them over the three weekends they were in town.

To be honest (and please don’t hurt me, Aussies!), Tim Tams are good, but they aren’t all that and a bag of pretzels, though I do like them better than Oreos.  Arnott’s has two other cookies that I prefer:  the Mint Slice and the Caramel Crown (two varieties of circular cookies that are also chocolate coated).

But Tim Tams do have one thing that makes them stand out:  the Tim Tam Slam!  The Tim Tam Slam, for me, is the only way to eat a Tim Tam.  It’s done like this:  Prepare a hot beverage of your choice, either tea, coffee, hot chocolate, or whatever you heart desires.

Bite off two opposite corners of the Tim Tam so you can see a little bit of the interior of the cookie.

Then place one end of the cookie into your hot beverage.  Quickly – very quickly – suck the opposite end of the cookie as if it were a straw.  The liquid will come all the way through the cookie.  The heat will collapse the cookie’s internal structure and the outer chocolate coating will also begin to melt, so as soon as you can taste the liquid, shove the whole cookie in your mouth.  If you don’t, it will break apart and fall into your drink.  When complete, your fingers should be all gooey with the melted chocolate coating, so lick them up.  Yummy!

Having a hard time contemplating how this works?  Let us show you!  The first video features Della doing a Tim Tam Slam with me narrating, and second video features yours truly doing a Tim Tam Slam with Eric narrating.

Tim Tams comes in pack of eleven – a random number.

But I suppose that rigorous scientific testing showed that a twelfth cookie might wear out the ladies…

And men!  Don’t forget the men!