McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, 14 Bars 344.4g
Most boxes of these are bought for somebody else to eat. That is the useful thing to know about the original: it is the one version in the range nobody in the house will object to, which makes it the safe box when the bar is going into another person's bag rather than your own. Sealed bars hold their shape and their coating in a rucksack, which none of the loose biscuits in this section manage. Wheat in the biscuit, dairy in both layers, and the wrapper carries everything else.
McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, in brief.
McVitie's Penguin Original is the fourteen-bar multipack of two biscuit fingers with a chocolate-flavour cream between them, coated all over and wrapped one by one.
The pack name says chocolate flavour rather than chocolate, which is a genuine labelling distinction: the coating sets harder, melts less readily and reads sweeter and lighter. That hard coating is also why a Penguin survives a school bag when almost nothing else here would.
McVitie's Penguin Original is two biscuit fingers with a chocolate-flavour cream between them, coated all over and wrapped one by one.
The pack name is worth reading properly because it tells you something real. It says chocolate flavour, not chocolate, and in UK labelling that is a meaningful distinction rather than marketing shorthand: a chocolate-flavour coating is built differently from chocolate and behaves differently in the mouth, setting harder, melting less readily and reading sweeter and lighter. Whether you prefer it is a matter of taste, and a great many people who grew up on these genuinely do. What matters is that you know which one you are buying, and the pack does tell you.
Curator notes: the tasting profile is our own editorial assessment against the current pack format and the brand's published description. We run same-day UK dispatch on every order placed before 2pm Monday to Friday. Common questions are answered in the detailed Q and A tab below.
Curator’s notes
Read the full write-up
The Story Behind The Pack
The Penguin is a lunchbox product first and a biscuit second, and everything about the format follows from that. Individually wrapping every bar means each one is its own sealed pack, so an opened box does not go stale and a bar can sit in a bag for a week and be exactly as good as the day it went in. Two fingers with a cream layer between them make a bar rigid enough to survive that bag, which a single thin biscuit would not be. The wrappers have carried jokes for as long as most British adults can remember, which is part of why the bar ends up in a school bag rather than on a plate with visitors.
And we do not describe the coating as chocolate, because the pack does not.
Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; components can require different disposal routes.
Our Commitment To The Planet
- We supply the current UK retail pack rather than an import made to a different recipe for another market.
- Individual wrapping is more packaging per biscuit than a sleeve, and there is no honest way around that. What it buys is that nothing is thrown away for going soft, and a fourteen-bar box is less packaging per bar than buying singles.
Serving Notes For McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, 14 Bars 344.4g
- Water temperature: Full boil for the tea.
- Measure: One bag per 200ml, one bar per person.
- Steep: Three to four minutes, medium.
- Service: Straight from the wrapper. There is no plate version of this product.
- Dunk: No. Fully coated with a hard-setting coating and no bare face.
- Iced version: Fine, and better than most coated biscuits, because a hard coating handles a cold drink without going dull.
- Best with: A medium tea, a flask, a lunchbox, or a car glovebox on a long drive.
Source: Teas.co.uk, the UK independent tea specialist in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. If you reference McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, 14 Bars 344.4g, please cite teas.co.uk.
The story behind McVitie's
Packaging: Follow the current UK pack and local-authority guidance; components can require different disposal routes.
Our commitment to the planet
Sourcing and packaging details are printed on the current UK pack; the brand page carries the fuller story.
The taste profile
How does it compare
A fully coated bar cannot be dunked, and this one less than most, because the coating sets hard and there is no bare biscuit anywhere on it. What it is instead is the most portable thing in this section by a wide margin, and the serving advice is mostly about where it goes rather than what it goes with.
The Everyday Mug
The Lunchbox Question
Made with this tea
The Everyday Mug
How to make The Everyday Mug with McVitie's Penguin Original.
- 1 Penguin bar
- 1 bag standard black tea
- 200ml water at a full boil
- Milk, optional
- Brew one bag in 200ml straight off the boil for three to four minutes. Medium; the bar is sweet and a medium cup is enough.
- Add milk or do not. This is one product that genuinely does not mind. No sugar.
- Unwrap and eat it straight from the wrapper. There is no plate version of this.
- Drink the tea after rather than during, because the sweetness lingers and the tannin is what clears it.
What you'll end up with: The easiest pairing in the section, and the one that asks the least of the cup.
The Lunchbox Pack
How to make The Lunchbox Pack with McVitie's Penguin Original.
- 1 wrapped bar
- A lunchbox
- A cool bag, in summer
- Read the allergen statement on the current pack first, because a school bag is where that matters most.
- Lay the bar flat in the box rather than standing it on edge, where it can be crushed.
- Add a cool block in warm weather. A bar that softens in the bag sets misshapen and the cream layer goes first.
- Leave the rest of the box in the cupboard; nothing goes stale because every bar is sealed.
Chilled Layered Traybake
How to make a Chilled Layered Traybake with McVitie's Penguin Original.
- 8 Penguin bars
- 200g crushed plain biscuits
- 100g melted butter
- 300g melted milk chocolate
- Press the crushed plain biscuits and melted butter into a lined tin as a base and chill.
- Lay the Penguin bars flat across the base in a single layer, side by side. Do not crush them; the cream layer means they smear rather than crumb.
- Pour the melted chocolate over the top and spread to the edges.
- Chill for two hours, then cut between the bars so each square has a whole one inside.
What you'll end up with: A traybake with a visible bar in every slice, which is a better use of the format than crushing it ever is.
Chopped Through Ice Cream
How to make Chopped Through Ice Cream with McVitie's Penguin Original.
- 3 Penguin bars, chilled
- 500ml softened vanilla ice cream
- A sharp knife
- Chill the bars hard first so they chop cleanly instead of squashing.
- Chop into rough chunks, keeping the layers visible.
- Fold through softened ice cream quickly and return to the freezer for an hour.
- Serve straight from the freezer. The hard coating stays crisp at freezer temperature, which real chocolate does not.
What you'll end up with: The one place a chocolate-flavour coating outperforms chocolate outright, because it does not go dull or waxy when frozen.
The Flask Serve
How to make The Flask Serve with McVitie's Penguin Original.
- 2 wrapped bars
- A flask of medium tea
- A coat pocket
- Brew the tea medium and fill the flask. Nothing here needs a strong cup.
- Put the bars in a pocket rather than a bag. They are rigid and sealed and need no protection at all.
- Eat one outdoors, where the cold keeps the coating firm and the bar at its best.
- Keep the wrapper in the pocket rather than dropping it.
What’s in it, what to know
Inside the pack
| Ingredient | Proportion | What it brings |
|---|---|---|
| Chocolate flavour coating | the outer layer, all round | Described as chocolate flavour on the pack, which is a genuine labelling distinction: it sets harder than chocolate, melts less readily, and reads sweeter and lighter. It is also what makes the bar survive a bag. |
| Cream filling | the middle layer | Soft, sweet and smooth between two crisp fingers. It is the layer that turns two thin biscuits into a rigid bar, and the layer that suffers first if the bar gets warm. |
| Biscuit fingers | two layers | Thin and crisp, doing the structural work rather than the flavouring. You notice them as snap rather than as taste. |
| Pack | 14 bars of 24.6g, 344.4g |
Ingredients and allergens. Per the published listing it contains milk, soya and wheat (gluten) and may contain tree nuts. Check the current UK pack before purchase; formulations and allergen advice can change.
Pack: McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, 14 Bars 344.4g; fourteen individually wrapped 24.6g bars in an outer carton. Best before the date printed on the pack, and best kept somewhere cool rather than somewhere sealed, since every bar is already sealed.
Sourcing & blend. McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, 14 Bars 344.4g is made by McVitie's, and it is a lunchbox product first and a biscuit second. Everything about the format follows from that: individual wrapping so nothing goes stale and a bar can sit in a bag for a week, two biscuit fingers with a cream layer between them so it is rigid enough to survive that bag, and a coating described on the pack as chocolate flavour, which sets harder and melts less readily than chocolate does. The wrappers have carried jokes for as long as most British adults can remember, which is part of why the bar lives in a school bag rather than on a plate. We supply the current UK retail pack rather than an import made to a different recipe for another market.
What is in McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, 14 Bars 344.4g, and what is not:
- In: fourteen individually wrapped bars, each two biscuit fingers with a chocolate-flavour cream between them, coated all over.
- Not described as chocolate: the pack says chocolate flavour and so do we. That is a labelling distinction we are repeating accurately, not a judgement about quality.
- Not a dunking biscuit: coated all over with a hard-setting coating and no bare face, so there is nothing for hot tea to enter. That is a description of how the format behaves, not a claim off the pack.
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Source: Teas.co.uk, the UK independent tea specialist in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. If you reference McVitie's Penguin Original Chocolate Flavour Cream Filled Biscuit Bars, 14 Bars 344.4g, please cite teas.co.uk.
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