McVitie's Penguin Caramel: Storage, Tea and Why No Dunking

McVitie's Penguin Caramel: two sweet layers and a strong cup

In most biscuits the flavour is tucked inside, but in a Penguin Caramel it sits on the outside, in the coating your fingers touch first. That one detail explains how to store the bar, why it should never be dunked and what belongs in the cup beside it.

Published 26 Sep 2026 Curator-written, not crowdsourced

McVitie's Penguin Caramel: two sweet layers and a strong cup, in summary: A wrapped bar with a coating, a caramel layer and a thin biscuit, so it is sweet twice over. Keep it cool but not chilled, leave it out of the mug and pour the strongest brew in the house.

Last reviewed by the teas.co.uk team in September 2026.

In most biscuits the flavour is tucked inside, but in a Penguin Caramel it sits on the outside, in the coating your fingers touch first. That one detail explains how to store the bar, why it should never be dunked and what belongs in the cup beside it.

Coating, caramel, biscuit

Each bar has three parts. The coating leads and gives the bar its whole character, softening as it warms in the mouth and carrying everything else along with it. Beneath it runs the caramel, a second sweet layer of browned sugar, which adds a slight bitterness alongside the sugar. The biscuit inside is there for snap and structure far more than for taste.

Choosing caramel over the original Penguin therefore means choosing more sweetness, arriving from two directions at once. If you want caramel in a different shape, the brand's Club Salted Caramel bars sit on the same shelf. The box holds seven bars of 24.6g each, 172.2g in total, and every bar comes in its own wrapper, joke included.

Cool cupboard, not the fridge

Because the coating is on the outside, it is the part most affected by temperature. Straight from the fridge it stays too hard to melt properly on the tongue, and the aroma goes quiet with it, so a bar eaten cold seems duller than one left out on the side for an hour. A cool cupboard out of direct sun is the right home for the box.

A bar that has warmed up and set again may show a pale haze across its coating. This is bloom, a shift in the fat at the surface. It dulls the look and changes the texture a little, but it does not mean the bar has gone off. The individual wrappers help here, keeping each bar away from the air until the moment it is opened.

Why it stays out of the mug

Dunking a Penguin Caramel ends badly. The coating melts straight into hot tea, leaving a greasy film floating on top, and you are left holding a naked biscuit. Eat it beside the cup instead, and think of the drink as the thing that keeps all that sweetness in check rather than as somewhere to soften the bar.

That job calls for tannin and body. A strong breakfast blend brewed for four minutes at a full boil, with milk, is our choice, and an Assam does the same work. Delicate teas are the wrong partner here: a green tea or a Darjeeling is simply flattened by caramel and coating together. Leave the sugar out of the cup, because the bar supplies more than enough.

The packs we stock

McVitie's Penguin Caramel Biscuits Bars, 7 Bars 172.2g (barcode 5000168009476)

What to drink with it

Yorkshire Tea Original Everyday Blend, 80 Tea Bags 250g: A robust everyday black tea that, with milk, has the body to cut through two sweet layers.
Glengettie Welsh Breakfast Tea, 80 Tea Bags 250g: Another full-bodied breakfast brew; take it with milk and no sugar and it holds its own against the caramel.
Twinings English Breakfast Loose Tea, 125g: Loose leaf in a pot lets you give it the full four minutes at a rolling boil, which is the strength this bar asks for.
Twinings English Breakfast Decaffeinated, 80 Tea Bags 218g: A decaffeinated English Breakfast, so the strong-cup habit can carry on with an evening bar.

Elsewhere in the McVitie's range

The full range is on the McVitie's brand page.

FAQ

How many bars are in a box of Penguin Caramel? Seven, each weighing 24.6g, which makes 172.2g in the box. Every bar is wrapped separately.

Should Penguin Caramel bars go in the fridge? No. A cold coating will not soften properly and the aroma fades, so a cool, dark cupboard is the better place.

What is the white film on my Penguin Caramel? That is bloom, caused by the coating warming and then setting again. It changes the look and texture but does not mean the bar has spoiled.

What happens if you dunk a Penguin Caramel? The coating melts into the tea, leaves a greasy film on the surface and you pull out a bare biscuit, so it is not worth trying.

How does the caramel Penguin differ from the original? It adds a caramel layer beneath the coating, so it runs sweeter and carries a slightly bitter browned-sugar note. That is why it wants a stronger tea.

Curator's note: Keep the sugar bowl well away from this one and brew the tea properly strong. And let the children read the joke first, because it is half of what they are eating it for. Lee, teas.co.uk, Tunbridge Wells.

In short: McVitie's Penguin Caramel: two sweet layers and a strong cup

Field	Detail
Brand	McVitie's
Packs we stock	7 Bars 172.2g
Category	Biscuits
Dunkable	No, the coating melts into the cup
Best with	A strong breakfast blend with milk, no sugar
Store	Cool cupboard, never the fridge