Biscuit Battle: Bourbon Cappuccino vs Hide & Seek Café Mocha

We taste-test the recently-launched coffee variants of two beloved chocolate biscuits.

BOURBON CAPPUCCINO
The amount of advertising one sees for Britannia’s Bourbon Cappuccino biscuits is inversely proportional to the availability of the stock. We tried three different supermarkets and none of them had it; we finally found them (on the suggestion of an attendant at the third and last supermarket) at Churchgate station, where we were the second of three consecutive customers who asked for the new product. The very idea of a coffee-flavoured Bourbon biscuit seems like a forced attempt to get our childhood snack to appeal to an older demographic (given the TV commercial for it, we’re not too off the mark). Sadly, there’s barely any trace of coffee in the square-shaped biscuit, which the packaging tells us contains coffee powder and artificial flavourings of vanilla, chocolate and coffee. We couldn’t discern any noticeable difference between the regular chocolate and Cappuccino Bourbons until we did what we used to do as children: we separated the sandwich and licked off the cream from the half that had it. There’s a hint of coffee in the cream, but it’s not enough for us to make the switch. And at Rs10 for a mere four biscuits, they’re not exactly value for money either. (A packet of regular chocolate ones gets you double that amount for Rs12.)

HIDE & SEEK CAFÉ MOCHA
If Britannia’s Pure Magic is the Indian Oreo then Parle’s Hide & Seek is our Chips Ahoy! The square-shaped chocolate-chip cookie seems to equally appeal to both adults and kids and so a coffee-flavoured product extension didn’t seem as far-fetched as the Bourbon Cappuccino. (Parle, the cheeky chaps, now sell their own version of the Bourbon biscuit by the way.) Hide & Seek’s Café Mocha is made with a coffee and chicory mixture, and you can smell the flavouring much more than you can taste it. While the coffee is more prominent than in the Bourbon Cappuccino, it leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. It’s definitely more bang for your buck though. A Rs20 pack, which currently gets you “20% extra”, is more than enough to share between three people. Still, we’re likely to stick to the chocolate Hide & Seek.