Byron Bay cookies

I was sent a rather exuberant package of Byron Bay Cookies, from the master distributor in the UK, Beyond the Bean, to get my teeth in to, in return for my thoughts.

Well, now I have well and truly had the chance to eat far more cookies than is good for me, here are my opinions.

In my mind cookies are huge soft and chewy discs with copious chunks of chocolate/raisin/fudge. The Byron Bay cookies are really biscuits but I guess it's just a question of those Aussie's regional perversion of the Queen's English.

The cookies come in both regular and gluten-free variations and they are all vegetarian. Since I've never sought out gluten free fodder, I was interested to investigate what the differences are to "normal". Having regular (below left) and gluten-free (below right) versions of the white chocolate and macadamia cookies gave me a good chance to do a comparison.

Amazingly the gluten-free was better than the normal cookie. It had a more pronounced richer aroma and despite being much more crumbly actually had a very creamy taste.

The strawberry and clotted cream cookies went down extremely well with me and the guys at work. They were very rich with a soft shortbread texture and little nuggets of intrigue to keep you interested.

As for the lemon macadamia shortbread. This is the Audrey Hepburn of shortbread. An elegant short biscuit with a delicate hint of lemon zing. Absolutely sublime.

The Dotty was a decorated with Smarties and jammed full of milk chocolate lumps (these were the saving grace of the very dry biscuit). I have to admit that the triple chocolate fudge gluten-free was terrible, managing to convert my tongue to an arid wasteland in milliseconds.

Overall though the Byron Bay cookies left me with a positive impression. They are very generous with their fillings and make a great accompaniment to a cup of coffee.

My thanks to Beyond the Bean for providing me with the samples.