If you follow Kim Kardashian on Instagram, as anyone who cares about world affairs should, you will have noticed that she recently took a break from butt selfies to shout out an exotic brand of biscuits called Arnott’s Tim Tams. Perhaps you were already familiar with this Australian snack, featuring two malted-chocolate biscuits separated by a layer of chocolate-cream filling and enrobed in another layer of chocolate. (There are other varieties, but the all-chocolate-everything one is the O.G.)
Tim Tams occupy a hallowed spot in the pantheon of great tea-time biscuits, right alongside McVities Digestives and Petit Écoliers. Here’s some analysis from the biscuit pros at A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down:
[pullquote]The Tim Tam is a classy little biscuit, it tastes great and its [sic] insubstantial nature affords the sucking of tea and coffee through it by Australian songstresses, the infamous Tim Tam Slam.[/pullquote]
The Tim Tam Slam? It turns out that while the Tim Tam has been marketed under various names and parent companies around the world, the Aussies are still the most well-versed in its chocolaty wonders. As such, they know that the best way to eat one is to bite off opposite corners of the biscuit, use it as a straw to slurp up a hot beverage like Milo malted hot chocolate, and then pop the whole warm, melty treat into their mouth in one go.
That, in essence, is the Tim Tam Slam. But there’s some technique required to perfect this maneuver, so we thought it prudent to show you how it’s done. Pick up some Arnott’s Original Chocolate Biscuits from Amazon or your local British/Canadian/Aussie-leaning shop, then get to slammin’.
Step 1: Bask in the glory of your Tim Tam.
It really is a lovely biscuit.
Step 2: Grip the biscuit between your thumb and index finger.
Textbook biscuit-holding technique.
Step 3: Take a small bite out of one corner of the biscuit.
The emphasis is on small—your goal here is simply to create an opening large enough to expose the wafers and creme filling within.
Step 4: Repeat with the opposite corner.
Your Tim Tam should look like this. It is now ready to be slammed.
Step 5: Hold your biscuit at one of the unbitten corners.
You’re fixing to dunk, but trust: This is no ordinary biscuit dunk.
Step 6: Using the Tim Tam like a straw, suck the hot liquid through the biscuit.
You’re going to need to suck pretty hard (pause), and you should stop as soon as you feel the hot chocolate/tea/coffee hit your lips.
Step 7: Slam the entire, sodden biscuit into your mouth.
Don’t tarry: Starting from when the liquid hits your lips, you’ve got about three seconds before the structural integrity of the biscuit is compromised. When it hits your tongue, it will disintegrate and unleash its warm, gooey core into your mouth, like a chocolaty Gusher. (Pro tip: Right before slamming, turn the biscuit upright so that the part that was in the hot beverage is pointing to the ceiling. This will allow some of the liquid to seep down to the area near your fingers, which will be the least melted.)
Step 8: Repeat until you feel physically ill.
But before you do, it’s helpful to watch a beautiful Aussie do it in real time, just so you get the full picture. For that we have Natalie Imbruglia, who calls this move a “Tim Tam Explosion.” Here, she demonstrates on The Graham Norton Show:
The amount of innuendo in this segment is impressive, even by Graham’s standards. And it’s a worthwhile reminder that Natalie Imbruglia is the type of top-shelf antipodean star that puts the Kim Ks of the world to shame. Amirite?