Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee

Product name: Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee
Purchase details: £0.39 for a 140g packet (Home Bargains)
Calories: 75 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK 

Earlier this month, I reviewed Jammie Dodgers Jam'n Custard and, whilst they were fine, I was left feeling slightly disappointed. I’d actually bought this Banana & Toffee packet before I’d tried and reviewed the Jam'n Custard biscuits so, by the time I got around to opening it, my expectations weren’t very high.

These Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee were very much a continuation of the brand. Once again made by Burton’s Foods Limited, they came in a similarly-designed wrapper to the Jam'n Custard biscuits, albeit with dark yellow and orange colours being used to represent the different flavour, and a splat of toffee instead of jam. The product image was almost identical too – the filling colours had simply been reversed and the darker side was a bit lighter.

Intriguingly, this packet weighed in at 10g lighter than the Jam'n Custard, although the wrapper claimed the ‘bonkers banana and tasty toffee’ flavour was ‘twice the fun’. There were no claims of using no artificial colours or ingredients, this time, but there was still no hydrogenated fat, and no GM ingredients had been used either. The final change was that each biscuit had eight fewer calories – winner!

I didn’t bother reading the product description when I purchased this treat – I just assumed the custard would be banana flavoured and that there would be toffee sauce instead of jam. Oh how wrong I was! I was very interested to see that the sandwich biscuit filling actually consisted of ‘banana flavoured jam’. That’s right. Banana. Jam. How bizarre! This contributed to 13% of the product and contained 1.5% banana juice from concentrate and 1% banana purée. As for the toffee, this was in the 13% custard filling, instead, and I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the biscuits themselves were toffee flavoured.

As suggested by the wrapper’s image, the biscuits had the same attractive overall design as the Jam’n Custard ones although I thought the ridges around the decoration seemed deeper to me – maybe that was just my imagination? The banana jam was more yellow than the wrapper (and my own photographs) suggested to the extent that it made me think of lemon curd. Although I don’t dislike lemon, I’m not a huge fan of it, so I had to make a conscious effort to get this connection out of my head! 

I had more success in cutting one of these biscuits open (although it was still very sticky!) which revealed an inner designated section for the filling – something I’d not noticed previously. The custard had the same shiny, gooey appearance whilst the toffee biscuits were a slightly different colour and had a visibly bitty base – I’d noticed that 3% of the ingredients consisted of crisped rice so I figured that this was what the flecks were.

This product had the usual Jammie Dodger biscuity smell, as well as a very, very slight banoffee aroma. Although the biscuits did still have the slightly stale taste that I don’t particularly enjoy, the additional flavour did mean that they were sweeter so they had been improved (not that I’d have consciously have made a connection with toffee!). Unfortunately, the texture was still more crumbly than I would have liked, but I did enjoy the added crispiness from the rice pieces.

Whilst I found it hard to differentiate between the two sides of the filling, the overall familiar banoffee flavour came through. The toffee flavour alone wasn’t very powerful but I did find the banana element, whilst slightly artificial, to be pleasantly strong and certainly recognisable. Texturally, the filling was chewy, as expected.

Whilst these Jammie Dodgers Banana & Toffee have equalled the Jam'n Custard biscuits’ overall score, I do think that this variety made improvements by infusing the biscuits themselves with a toffee flavour, as well as adding a bit of extra texture. I also found the variety’s flavour to be more unique and memorable. As a result, in future, this is the version I would choose. 

Appearance: 8/10
Aroma: 6/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10