Sometimes, all you want is a nice, plain sweet biscuit to dunk in your cuppa. No fancy frills or furbelows that draw attention away from the beverage at hand. If this is you, the Nice is your friend, my friend. Nice biscuits also offer appeal to the very busily important and time-poor among you – all you need is a quick dunk, and these babies are ready to fall apart in your mouth. So this basic biscuit scores a place on our list for these dual qualities. Along with those big sugar crystals. Is it a tad boring? Yes. But so is a cup of tea. So why not celebrate two perfectly nice things that have finally found each other?

Almost too obvious to be included on this list, but so darn obvious, it just had to be. Stop showing off, Tim Tams. You’re good enough on your own. Why do you need to come along and spoil things for all of these other hard-working biscuits? We’re deducting points for poor sportsmanship. But points must be given for the Tim Tam slam. Because like Simone Biles and the Yurchenko double pike, it’s a move that no other biscuit has yet been able to accomplish.

These are for the stayers among you. The ones who know that good things come to those who wait. Yes, the concrete-like texture of these biscuits may have sent many a naive Ginger Nut newbie to the horrors of the dentist’s chair, but the pros know that when you dunk them slow, that hard-as-nails exterior slowly melts away bit by bit, leaving you with a biscuit that slowly softens into spicy sweetness. Kind of like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

This chocolate-filled delight would have made it much further up on our list if it weren’t for the fact that it’s just too darn small. You almost need a pair of tweezers and a team of highly skilled biscuitology surgeons to manoeuvre it into your cuppa. This is a clear message to Arnott’s: make Kingstons bigger. Cup-sized ones for dunking, and ones as big as my head for, well, me. But while it loses points for size, it wins them for its irresistible buttery crumb, which maintains its form when dunked, melting in the mouth with just the right hint of biscuity crunch. The chocolate filling is the creamy, dreamy added bonus.

Why boring old Arrowroot? Sure, it’s a classic, and they’re hard to beat. But has anyone ever taken the time to think about how these bickies are shaped? That rounded tip is bang-on perfectly suited to torpedoing straight into a cup of tea. No pesky edges to get in the way. And while it’s plain, the subtle vanilla flavour of the Milk Arrowroot makes it the perfect pairing for countless styles of tea and coffee. But there is a downside here: dunking these babies requires military precision. Leave them in a second too long and they’ll disintegrate into sludge in your mouth. Luckily they’re cheap, so you can practise with a whole packet, to hone your dunking skills to fastidiously timed perfection.

From boring to boujee. Do Biscoff biscuits really need anymore publicity? Yes, we know you’re delicious. Shut up about it already. But it has to be said that the satisfying crispness, narrow shape and subtle spiciness of these bickies all make them ideal for dunking into a cuppa. So they get points for function. And taste. And style. And popularity. But they lose points for not losing any points. So there.

The only other cream-filled biscuit to land on our list, the genius of the Monte Carlo lies in the sticky raspberry jam layer that adheres the vanilla cream to the crunchy honeyed biscuit. This helps to maintain the structural integrity of the entire operation so that, when you dunk and bite, you end up with a truly unique three-dimensional textural experience. So this bickie earns bonus points – not just for being a good dunker, but for holding it together when the whole world around us seems to be falling apart.

Chonky. Chocolatey. Crunchy. What more could you want? The serving size is generous, the crumb is sturdy and the chocolate is just sweet enough, without spilling over into Disney Channel territory. Really the perfect all-rounder if you like to dunk on the dark side. Dip it quick for a good tea-soaked crunch, or dip it slow and let the chocolate crumbs melt on your tongue. If we had any real authority here, we’d give this bickie some kind of award.

Pair this with a cup of Bushells tea, and you’ve got Australiana in a cup. The Anzac biscuit’s oaty crumb and solid structure make it a prime candidate for dunking, while the rich sweetness from the golden syrup pairs perfectly with both tea and coffee. If you prefer to make your own Anzac biscuits, the Country Women’s Association recipe is always a winner. Pro tip from our Food Director, Lucy Nunes: if you like to dunk them, bake your biscuits for an extra 5 minutes so they’re extra crunchy.

In our exhaustive quantitative and qualitative research study (we asked a bunch of people on social media what they thought), McVitie’s Digestives almost always came up as one of the top dunking choices. When it comes to plain digestives, the reasons are quite clear – this bickie has good structure that holds its own against even the steamiest cuppa, and its not-too-sweet, kind of malty flavour is the perfect subtle pairing for both tea and coffee, whether you choose a milky brew or a straight-up caffeine injection. But this bickie lost points for the additional votes it got for the chocolate variety. Why dunk something that’s going to melt straight off into the cup? Sorry, team McVitie. You can’t have it both ways.

Here you have it. The ultimate dunking champion. Dunk it whole, or split it in two and dunk it one by one. Either way, this biscuit manages to combine airy lightness with consistent crunch factor, and offers you the choice of a quick dunk-and-munch procedure, or a slow dunk-and-melt-in-your-mouth manoeuvre. Simple. Effective. Dunktastic. 10/10.