Slamming the Tim Tam
Youtube distracted me today. So did Shaun Micallef, one of my favourite comedians. I don’t know if his humour translates outside Australia, but in one YouTube clip he manages to summarise a food history sortie, so today’s post is about that clip. The photo above is for pretties – you’ll find the clip below, with a bit of commentary below that. On an almost unrelated note, I never understood why the network that hosted it didn’t understand that getting an off-the-wall comedian to host a tonight show might not produce a *normal* chat show, myself.
Let me stop getting distracted (obviously it’s the state of my mind this morning, and not YouTube at all!). On to the food history:
Not too long ago, Australia had a little flurry (it seemed big at the time, as these things do) about Dick Smith (the firm) doing an imitation Tim-Tam. Tim-Tam is one of our iconic biscuits. Chocolate biscuits sandwiching chocolate filling then the whole thing dunked in more chocolate. These days there are umpteen Tim-Tam varieties, including a pink one that raises money to fight breast cancer. These days, too, the Tim Tam slam has developed from a messy and very chocolate way of drinking coffee to a messy and very chocolate way of drinking coffee or champagne (you bite two diametrically opposed corners off the biscuit, then dip one exposed corner in your drink and use the biscuit as a straw – be prepared for mess).
Since most of you reading this have never met a Tim Tam (for the record, I like the dark chocolate and the Black Forest), I found you a post on what I hope is the US equivalent biscuit.
There is no tradition about storing Tim Tams in bomb shelters. Instead we have the Tim Tam slam. I rather suspect that says something about the US and about Australia, but I’m honestly not sure what (apart from the lack of bomb shelters here and that Twinkies would fall to pieces too quickly if you used them as a straw).
food history, Shaun Micallef, Tim Tam, Tim Tam slam, Twinkies
November 9th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Oh, ew, no no no. The Twinkie is a soft, spongy, tooth-achingly sweet grease bomb. And it does not have the same cultural resonance — in fact, it’s routinely held up as a symbol for all that is evil about the American diet and, by extension, the American way of life. Disclosure: I actually used to eat — and like — Twinkies in my youth. Can’t get ‘em down now.
There was actually a murderer who got off because of “reduced capacity” as a result of his junk-food diet, in which Twinkies figured prominently. Wikipedia has an article on the whole sordid story.
November 9th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
If twinkies are in no way culturally congate with tim tams, then what is?
November 9th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
The closest thing is the Oreo, which is the ubiquitous cookie of childhood and is customarily dismembered in the course of consumption. (Twist the two halves apart, scrape the cream off with your front teeth, chuck the cookie part in the bin when your parents aren’t looking.)
November 11th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Don’t forget they have chocolate covered Oreos now too, Laura. In spring the filling can be pink or yellow, at Christmas red or green. There are now mint creme Oreos and peanut butter creme Oreos. There are even all chocolate ones. There are resellers who buy them in bulk, coat them with Belgian chocolate, decorate them somehow and then ship them out via mail order.
A friend of mine in Oz sent us timtams a couple of times. Miss Mama got posession of them right quick, but she never did the timtam slam. Nor did I for that matter. But my friend did enclose the instructions for doing the timtam slam with our box of Oznian goodies.
Dang. Now I’m craving Violet Crumbles and Milo Bars! ! ! !
November 13th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Ooh! I remember watching this episode of Micallef.
(I often buy Tim Tams when I’m over in Australia, and take the opportunity to buy the fancy variants not easily available here … )
November 13th, 2007 at 7:27 am
You should have said. Let me know which varieties they are and next time you come I might recruit fellow friends and cause them to appear in strange places. Or not. It depends on how serious I am that week. This week - for instance- I am a sober academic type of person. The week of Conflux, on the other hand…
August 14th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
[...] Food History Blog Archive Slamming the Tim Tam __________________ …formerly Bluebell… [...]