BOTW #4: Mikado

I find myself again apologizing for the lateness of this post. I was away all weekend on a homestay in the town of Carrigaline and when I came back I had to deal with second-week-of-classes craziness. Hopefully this was worth waiting for (yay! pretty biscuit!) and I’ll try and be a bit more punctual next week!

Name: Mikado
Producer: Jacob’s Biscuits, Jacob Fruitfield Foods Limited

I’m not ashamed to admit it. I am a shallow person when it comes to delicious treats. And it is this shallowness that resulted in me buying the pastel pink things of beauty known as Mikados. Lightly rose-colored and coated in coconut, Mikados are gorgeous little biscuits worthy of the flittiest of fairies and they taste far better than they have any right too.



The basic construction of the Mikado is a simple affair. A biscuit base is topped with two lines of pink marshmallow “dollops” outlining a ribbon of raspberry jam and the whole thing is topped off with coconut.

To begin with, the biscuit base is very soft and almost cake-like. There is no crunch anywhere in this biscuit, but that’s ok. When you bit into the Mikado, your teeth sink into the soft pillowy marshmallow and the cakey biscuit underneath.

The marshmallow, though colored pink, does not seem to have any distinct flavor of its own. Again, the texture it provides to the overall Mikado is the most important aspect. This marshmallow manages to be light and fluffy without being overly sticky. It’s easy to bite one of the little blobs in half without pulling the whole line of marshmallow off the biscuit base. Clever, that.

The jam running along the center of the biscuit is where most of the flavor of the Mikado comes from. The jam has a beautiful light raspberry flavor, but after a bit of poking ‘round the internet I discovered that I had been fooled! The jam is apparently raspberry-flavored APPLE jam! Boy, Jacobs, you sure got me! Why they flavor apple jam like raspberry jam rather than just using raspberry jam I really have no clue. But it tastes good.

The coconut is both untoasted and unsweetened so it does not add much in the flavor department, but after the soft biscuit and the airy marshmallow, it’s nice to have the light coating of coconut to add a bit of bite.



Overall, the Mikado is a light and tasty biscuit. It’s not terribly satisfying (as opposed to, say, the HobNob or Club Milk) but you can’t really help but smile when you look at it. The Mikado would be perfect with a tiny cup of tea in a pretty china teacup on a pretty china saucer (not really my speed…I’m more of the Big Gulp mug consumer of tea: Barry’s Gold Blend, no sugar, milk if I’m feeling decadent).

All I know is that I enjoyed my Mikados and felt very dainty nibbling away at the little pink beauties. If I ever have to throw a fairy princess tea party, I know what biscuits I’ll reach for…