Oh no! What’s happened to Chocolate Sultana Pasties? Jane Phare investigates.
“I have a question for you,” my brainy friend blurted out on the phone.
I braced myself. She’s a researcher at Massey University, has a degree in politics and a PhD. This was bound to be a tough one. I clutched the computer mouse, ready to open Wikipedia or frantically search Google for the answer.
“What’s happened to Chocolate Sultana Pasties?” she demanded. No warning, just that.
She knew this would pierce deeply, cause my stomach to lurch in fear. Old friends know which are your favourite biscuits.
Something has happened to them, she said. And it’s not good, she added.
Griffin's has changed the recipe for the Sultana pasties ... and it's not for the better. Photo / Carson Bluck
Chocolate Sultana Pasties and I go back a long way. They were my dependable wind-down in the 1980s after a long night shift at the Herald. I grew up in a family in which chocolate biscuits were a mystery, so when I left home I could easily demolish an entire packet in a sitting. And I’ve never been able to resist them since.
My friend also knew that I, as a deep-dive investigative journalist, would not stop until I had uncovered the truth. Panic-stricken, I rushed to the local Four Square to buy a packet for evidence and, sure enough, the recipe had changed. Why, oh why, do manufacturers have to meddle? Don’t they know the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?
Well, it turns out something had broken in the Griffin’s biscuit factory; or to be more accurate, had become obsolete. As it happens, the company’s media database is also obsolete.
The PR media person – a contact given by the woman answering Griffin’s 24/7 0800 number – told the Herald he hadn’t worked for the company for five years and asked if he could be removed from the list.
To their credit, once the right PR company was located, Griffin’s were open and upfront in their response to written questions. (However, the requested interview never eventuated).
Sultana Pasties, they explained, were made using 1960s equipment for which the company could no longer buy parts. (That equipment was inherited when Griffin’s acquired the Hudsons biscuits range and Papakura factory in 1990 after an exchange with Cadbury.)
The 1960s equipment used to manufacture Sultana Pasties in Griffin's Papakura factory became obsolete, forcing the company to change the recipe. Photo / Carson Bluck
With the manufacturing plant obsolete, Griffin’s had to change the way it made the Sultana Pastie and, as a result, the recipe. No longer could the beloved bikkie, first introduced in 1935 by Hudsons, be described as “light flakey pastry biscuits filled with sultanas and covered with rich, dark chocolate”. The sweetness of the chocolate and the sultanas was offset by the plainness of the unsweetened water-cracker-like layers. But, no more.
One former fan let rip about the new recipe, describing what lurked beneath the chocolate coating as an “amorphous lump”. My own description is along the lines of an overly sweet, fudge-like biscuit mixed with sultana mince.
I asked Griffin’s, owned by the German snack-food giant Intersnack Group, how they would describe the biscuit now. Top marks to Griffin’s for the effort they put into the response.
“The new recipe is a fresh take on our previous Sultana Pasties recipe with sultanas now baked into a vanilla biscuit and covered in rich dark chocolate.”
Sultana Pasties aren't what they used to be. Photo / Carson Bluck
And there was more PR-speak.
“The team at the bakery in Papakura used the latest biscuit technology to ensure we can continue to deliver a chocolate sultana-style biscuit to a high quality at great value for our consumers.”
The change has been clearly communicated by the words “NEW RECIPE callout on the front of the pack”, they say.
And how has the NEW RECIPE been received by biscuit lovers?
On the whole, well received, says Griffin’s. “However we have received a few complaints from loyal customers which is to be expected given the new baking approach and recipe.”
The ingredients are much the same, it says, only the percentages have changed. Sultanas used to be 34%, now they’re down to 25% to stop the biscuits breaking in the pack. But they’ve increased the chocolate coating from 36% to 40%.
Although the biscuits taste sweeter, Griffin’s says the quantity of sugar has dropped from 53.8g per 100g to 48.4g per 100g due to a reduction in the high-in-sugar sultanas.
Are they smaller?
Sultana pastie aficionados also complain the biscuit itself has reduced in size over the years. I asked Griffin’s when this happened. It hasn’t, they replied. The company has been using the same biscuit cutter stamp for decades.
“When we had to change the way we made the biscuit we kept the dimension of the cutter the same.”
Five years ago a writer for the Spinoff taste-tested – and ranked – 142 New Zealand biscuits. Back then Chocolate Sultana Pasties ranked 85th on the list, based on the personal taste of the author. She ranked Arnott’s Chocolate Butternut Snaps first. As the iconic but nothing-like-the-original Sultana Pastie approaches its 100th birthday in 10 years' time, it could struggle to hold even 85th place.
Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based business, features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.
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