I’ve often wondered what cookies are like in other countries. The cookies from China was my first taste of cookies outside the US. Luckily, I have the pleasure of sharing with you what cookies in the UK are like! Check out this guest post from caffesociety.co.uk!

Cookies in the UK

If you have ever visited the UK or dined in a British teashop and had the chance to sample some cookies, you probably noticed that they were very different from cookies in the US. Traditional UK cookies have a unique texture and flavor. They tend to be a bit crunchier and dryer than American cookies. They also have a different kind of sweetness. American cookies usually have tons of sugar, chocolate and frosting. Even American sugar cookies are coated in icing and sugar sprinkles. If you prefer a cookie that is less overwhelmingly sweet, you might find traditional UK cookies more appealing.

In the US, cookies are usually served with milk for dessert. In the UK, cookies are more of a snack than a dessert and they are typically served with tea. In order to have a more authentic cookie eating experience, eat the UK cookies with a cup of English breakfast tea. Try dipping the cookies into the tea prior to tasting.

The most well known type of UK cookie is the biscuit. A UK biscuit is not the same as a biscuit in the US, which is a soft, flaky form of bread. UK biscuits are a type of cookie. They are usually small, crunchy and sometimes sweet. Most biscuits are basically compacted shortbread, which is made from butter, sugar, flour and milk.

It is quite common to enhance biscuits with fruit flavors. Lemon cookies have the perfect combination of bitterness and sweetness. Orange biscuits are also worth trying. Many fruit flavored biscuits have almonds or peanuts in them.

Biscuit cookies can also be brown sugar based and flavored with spices or herbs. Gingersnaps are made of molasses, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, salt, baking soda, ginger and cinnamon. Lavender shortbread is slightly less sweetened to bring out the lavender flavor. Lavender cookies contain butter, lavender sugar and flour.

Sandwich cookies are also customary in the UK. Sandwich cookies are made up of two cookies, usually shortbread, with some kind of filling in the middle. Fruit fillings, like lemon or currant custard, are common. Sandwich cookies can also contain a rich chocolate filling. Try spreading your favorite flavor of jam on the flat side of a shortbread biscuit and then placing a second biscuit on top of the jam to make your own homemade UK sandwich cookie.

Cookies from the UK are very inexpensive and are comparable to the prices of US cookies. You can purchase two-ounce packages of raspberry, key lime and lemon flavored cookies from online shops for about $2.00 and five-ounce packages for about $5.00. Eight-ounce packages of jam filled cookies can be found for around $6.00 to $8.00. Shortbread cookies are usually about $5.00.

If you would rather make your own UK cookies, hundreds of recipe databases can be found on the internet. Search the web to find a recipe that looks good to you and make the cookies at home. Remember to eat the cookies with tea for a more authentic experience. If you are not a fan of tea, you should research coffee machines UK cookies can also be served with coffee, so you should consider purchasing a coffee machine so that you can eat your cookies with fresh, hot coffee.

Kelley’s Kookies were nice enough to reach out to me and ask me to review their cookies. I stopped by their location at the Westside Pavilion and came across:

a very clean, neat, and bright store. The first thing I noticed about the store is that it’s not like a typical cookie store that have lots of bright colors and other baked goods. Kelley’s Kookies store was very nicely organized with the cookies clearly in display in neat packages. There was a clear connection between the way the cookies are packaged and the store — I think anyone who receives a package of these cookies will know exactly the feeling and look of the store before even walking in. I didn’t bother the 3 gentlemen maintaining the store at first.. I wanted to take a walk around and breathe in the cookies! Kelley’s Kookies pride themselves on containing only natural ingredients and no preservatives. There were so many different kinds:

Lemon shortbread, macadamia chocolate chip, shortbread, sugar cookies, Kelley’s Delight, melting moments

Pecan shortbread, Guava dreams, krispy oatmeal, neapolitan delight

Guava Dreams

Neapolitan Delight

Others I saw are chocolate chip krispy oatmeal (actually contains crispy rice cereal), raspberry dream (the “dream” cookies are a shortbread sandwich cookie with fruit filling), pecan shortbread, and macadamia ice box (mac nuts and vanilla). Varied and unique.

Here was my present, just in time for my birthday!

This box was like a little version of the store, I told you! When you take off the sleeve and open the box, you’re greeted by a little paper that tells you how much love went into making each of the cookies and that they are all natural and don’t contain preservatives:

Past the paper obstacle is what you’ve been waiting for:

The first package of cookies were my favorite:

This was kind of like a shortbread with a little more flavor. Of course, being a chocolate lover, I wish that the whole thing was covered in chocolate, but I get that this is prettier. This tasted great! And that chocolate layer was thick:

I thought the ratio of chocolate to cookie was great in that half of the cookie. My only criticism would be that the cookie is too thick. I think it would have been better if there wasn’t so much height to the cookie; it added thickness and cakey-ness.

The sugar cookies were by far the prettiest:

(Don’t mind the powdered sugar.) The sugar cookies had sprinkles on top which was such a nice addition to an otherwise plain cookie. Firstly it’s very visually pleasing. I love bright colors! Secondly it was a good partner in terms of texture; the cookie itself was crunchy with small crumbs and pieces while the sprinkles were slightly bigger and harder.

Next, macadamia chocolate chip:

More macadamia nuts!!! These were the favorite among most of the people I shared these cookies with.

You can see in the image specks of the macadamia nuts. I don’t feel like the flavor of the macadamia nut stood out enough. Need more macadamia! I’m not sure if anyone who didn’t  read the label knew that there were macadamia nuts. But like I said, people had the most compliments about this cookie; everyone seemed to love the bite-sized aspect about this cookie, and hey, they tasted great too. If you don’t mind crunchy cookies, this cookie is for you.

These powdered cookies were the most messy! But what can you expect from cookies that have powdered sugar huh:

Each paper cup contained two of these cookies:

These were the least “cookie” of the four. This is a walnut mixture covered in powdered sugar. They were my least favorite for a variety of reasons: they didn’t really taste like anything and they were super crumbly, but I’ll admit the reason I didn’t like these cookies was because the powdered sugar got EVERYWHERE. And I don’t mean only while I was eating it. My friends and I didn’t eat these cookies in one sitting which means I put the cookies back in the box to transport them and when I opened the box again, powdered sugar was all over the inside of the box. I know this doesn’t have anything to do with the taste of the cookie or anything, but it did have an effect on my, erm, cookie experience. I would have liked a resealable bag to house these cookies. Luckily, the box itself didn’t allow for leaks (that thing is sealed shut when it’s closed!), for which my car seat and dining room thank you.

…and the best part! Mention my blog in one of the bakeries, spend $10 and get an awesome dawesome spatula!!!! You know you need one!!!

• Taste: 6-7: pretty average
• Crust and center moistness: crunchy cookies
• Value: $4.50 – $5.50 per pack; $18 for something like I got above and goes up to $43 for the Grand Gift Box, which contains 9 packs of cookies (a savings of an entire $2! but you get the nice box with a bow in which to package them.). A little much for my wallet, despite the “natural” and “no preservatives” claims — I mean what does “natural” mean anymore? I’ll admit everything on the ingredients list was everything I could pronounce.. including “hydrogenated oil.”
• Overall: These cookies provide for a great-looking present, and I love the variety of flavors. The gentlemen in the store were incredibly nice and helpful. I just wish that the powdered cookies would have resealable packaging because that’s something that would discourage me from buying those specifically. My friends and I enjoyed eating these. While they weren’t exactly spectacular, I think they’re worth a visit!

Kelley’s Kookies (they’ll ship, too!)
Bakeries located in the Westside Pavilion, Santa Anita Mall, and a location in Stanton on Katella. Their cookies are also sold in Mitsuwa and Marukai and a variety of other places: Kelley’s Kookies locations

Went to the Larchmont Bungalow for lunchie one day and gasped at the huuuuuuuuuuge cookies they have in the glass case! After I paid for my sandwich and cookie and it didn’t take long for me to regret it… I just remembered that huge cookies are not good. Usually they are thick, dense, and cakey. I always say small cookies are better. Boy was I wrong…

This cookie was so big and fragile I couldn’t hold it in my hand. Since you know the size and shape of my hand and palm, imagine my hand with my fingers spread out; the cookie completely encompassed my palm and went all the way out to almost the ends of my fingers:

This cookie was huuuuuuuuge. And it better have been, I paid $3.25 for that thing!! Man I cannot believe I paid >$3 for that cookie. I guess this is meant to be shared, so a little over a buck per person, I guess that’s reasonable. After I finished my sandwich, I dug into the cookie. It’s not light but much to my surprise, it’s not dense. There’s kind of a familiar taste about this cookie too. Tastes buttery and soft. It is *actually* pretty good! Nothing super spectacular that really sets itself apart from others.. or so I thought. It wasn’t long (probably two broken pieces of cookie in) before I got to the really soft and gooey part of the cookie. Take a look:

Can you see that? Can you SEE THAT?!?! This cookie was baked to the ultimate perfection. This cookie was so perfectly undercooked that when it came out of the oven, it baked for just the right amount on the baking sheet to get that consistency you normally get only when you just take it out of the oven. They clearly compensated for that extra baking baked goods do after they come out of the oven. I will admit that this cookie was the most gooey, soft and chewy, cookie dough-y cookie I’ve ever had in a store.

• Taste: 8
• Crust and center moistness: soft and gooey on the inside. 10
• Value: $3.25 for a ginormous cookie. I really wish they would break these into thirds and sell them for way less. But this is Larchmont, so whatcha gonna do.
• Overall: They are too pricey and big (stomach ache) for me to buy again, but will satisfy your craving! Your craving and the cravings of 1-3 of your friends…

Larchmont Bungalow
107 N Larchmont Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90004
323.461.1528
Open everyday from 7:30 AM – 10 PM

Tara from Javabites introduced me to her coffee cookies! When I went on the site to find out more information, I learned that Javabites is all about the glorious combination of cookies and coffee (well that was after gasping at the city where she’s from: LOVELAND, CO!! To be honest, Tara, this set the bar high for me. How can cookies from a city called LOVELAND be bad??). She invited me to dip my cookies in milk or coffee if I wanted, so when I received the box, Armando and I went to TJ’s specifically to get cow’s milk (he absolutely REFUSED to eat his cookies with the almond milk I bought him. *sigh* At least he agreed to getting milk from cows that are not treated with rBST so I guess we kind of met in the middle.)

I have to apologize now: my point and shoot takes horrible grainy pictures no matter what I put the ISO to, and my cellphone takes awful pictures in artificial light, so these pictures don’t at all do these cookies justice.

The first thing I took out was the cutest package! It was a box of cookies in the shape of a java mug!

You can actually hold the box by the handle but I couldn’t play with it for any longer because Armando was passively aggressively trying to get at the contents. There were 12 cookies total in here: 6 packages of 2 each!

So, they are a bit on the small side individually, but remember that there are TWO of them, and they BOTH total about 100 calories. Ok now that the cookies are out of the packages, let me walk you through the process of eating cookies as depicted by Armando.

1. First, grabby grabby

2. Then dippy dippy

3. Dipped cookie goes into mouf

4. If you want, you’re free to drink the cow’s milk sans rBST. The great news: The cookie doesn’t disintegrate in the milk! Sorry, I know this is a total crotch shot…

5. Steal gf’s cookies.

Wait, what??

So Armando does this thing where he goes, “hey honey, aren’t you going to finish your quesadilla?” because he wants it. Shortly after we finished our cookies, Armando went back to the table and started going through the box again and asked “the” question: Hey honey, aren’t you going to eat the rest of your cookies? (This picture is horrible because I had to catch him in secrecy. I caught him red-handed!)

The other four packages of cookies in the box were:

When I read about these cookies online, I thought that the coffee was in the cookie via liquid form and mixed into the liquid half of the dough. If you look closely at the cookie, you’ll see that actual pieces of coffee bean are part of the cookie. You can make out some black specs in the cookie above, but it’s clearer to see in the white chocolate vanilla latte:

And the cross midsection of this cookie shows that the bean specs are not just drizzled on top:

which to me is actually way cooler than simply making coffee and mixing that into the dough. Here’s cinnamon cappuccino:

And my personal favorite, white chocolate mocha latte:

The first thing I noticed about these cookies are very crunchy. This was unpleasant to me at first, but on the other hand, this contributed to the lack of gross soggy crumbs in Armando’s milk. In terms of taste, the amount of coffee flavor is matched perfectly with the rest of the flavors. Well I think the cinnamon cappuccino could have used some more cinnamon. What I love about these cookies is that Javabites doesn’t skimp on the other flavors. In the cut of the white chocolate mocha latte you see 5 white chocolate chips already. I also need to mention that the smell of the cookies once you open the package is incredible. The white chocolate mocha latte smelled the strongest which is one of the reasons it’s my favorite. AAAAAAAAAND, all the ingredients are simple, like.. things you can pronounce and are familiar with:

I would rank these cookies in this order:

1. White choc mocha latte
2. White choc vanilla latte
3. Almond mocha
4. Chocolate chip
5. Cinnamon cappuccino

ALERT: She’s creating new flavs!

• Taste: 7
• Crust and center moistness: Crunchy cookies, which mean crumbly, but it’s great for dipping into milk and coffee
• Value: $5 – $5.38 for a box of 12 on Amazon right now — that’s a really good deal! I only wish you didn’t have to buy in a pack of 4 boxes or 48 cookies.
• Overall: I love the idea of putting the espresso bean bits into cookies like this. I would personally prefer it if these cookies were softer, but I am loving the fact that the ingredients are real, whole, and sans hydrogenated oil. They really cure the sweet tooth for about 100 calories!!! 8

Javabites
http://www.javabites.com
If you’re in CO, here’s Javabite’s store list
If you’re not in CO, you can order off of Amazon

El novio y yo took the friends out for helping us move. Mando had the great idea to go to A-Frame, which has the delightful honor of having Chef Roy (you know, of Chego and the Kogi Truck) as their head chef. The food was great but you know I was looking forward to dessert before we even ate…

There were two ice cream sandwiches: cherry oatmeal cookie with some ice cream — I didn’t look into the details once I saw “cherry” and “oatmeal” — so by default my friend and I chose the other one: Szechuan pepper cookies sandwiching ginger ice cream. Ginger cookies aren’t hard to come by, but ginger ice cream… now that’s different!

The cookie was sizeable without being too huge (sorry, no hand in the picture). The cookie, aside from being dense and moist, was definitely peppery! You couldn’t see individual pieces of pepper but you knew for sure it was there. There was a weird taste I could not put my finger on. The ice cream was not much to talk about; I think the cookie overwhelmed the taste of the ice cream, but not sure how it would have gone over if the ice cream was more flavorful. Or maybe I was just way too focused on what the heck was in the cookie I wasn’t loving…

• Taste: 7
• Crust and center moistness: Cookie got to be a little crumbly, but it’s hard to eat a cookie w/ a fork in the first place.
• Value: $6, which is like half an entree, so pretty good
• Overall: I would eat it again because I know I’m going to come back but I’d love to try some other things first. 7

A-Frame
http://www.aframela.com
12565 Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90066
310-398-7700

They’re open until 2AM everyday, but not every section of their menu is available all the time — their lunch menu stops at 3:30, they serve smaller plates until 5 or 5:30 which is when their dinner menu gets served.

I’m adding another vegan cookie to the mix! This time… vegan AND gluten-free!

Babycakes has its origin in NYC and has since opened up a shop in downtown LA. All of their products are vegan and most are gluten-free! Their non-gluten-free products use spelt flour, which I know has been the topic of some gluten vs. non-gluten debates, but they list spelt under their non-gluten-free products, so good for them for naming it that way. (I guess you can tell which side of the argument I stand on.) I have tried their cupcakes and cookies. Their cupcakes are delicious, but the review on that needs to go on another blog. Supposedly, their donuts are phenomenal as well!

The bakery isn’t in the middle of downtown; rather, it’s kind of on one edge of downtown. But as long as you’re on this side of Los Angeles street, you’re fine. The bakery is small but they made do with what space they had. Baked goods line up and stack up in display cases taller than me to your left, a few tables and chairs are on your right, and the cash register sits at the end of the walkway.

A co-worker of mine told me that Babycakes’ cookies were some of the best cookies he’s had, vegan and gluten-free or not. Well, I told him, I’ll be the judge of that. I walked in and immediately ordered a chocolate chip cookie, eyes widened and appetite whetted by the thought of eating every single donut, pastry, cookie, loaf of bread, cupcake, muffin, brownie, and whatever else they had in the entire store. I’ll bet even the paint and tile in this place are vegan and gluten-free.

The cookie smelled delicious:

but was the thinnest cookie ever:

The flatness of the cookie was a definite turn-off. How could a cookie this flat possibly be good? In cookies you look for that moist, soft & fluffy, light-as-a-cloud center with pockets of air in between the structural integrity that is individual crumbs. I didn’t have faith. I was a non-believer. But dude, I paid for this cookie, and hell will freeze over if I don’t eat something I paid for.

Have you ever had one of those moments where your brain turned upside down? Or you got slapped in the face? Or an internal volcano dispelled lava of disbelief all over your body? Metaphorically speaking, at least? A moment where you realize you were dead wrong, that you asserted yourself so unkindly,  and are so embarrassed to admit it except on your cookie blog? Well, that’s me right now.

This cookie was crispy on the outside, soft & moist on the inside — baked exactly right. I almost got over how flat the cookie is real fast. There are enough chocolate chips in there, but a few more wouldn’t hurt. Out of all the vegan cookies I’ve eaten, this tastes the closest to a regular cookie, which isn’t that big of a deal, but I know eating vegan AND gluten-free is scary to some people. If everyone could have this cookie as an introduction to this alternative less-cruelty eating style I think people would be more open to trying new things.

• Taste: Delicious + the smell was super enticing. 10
• Crust and center moistness: crispy crust, soft interior. if it were not as flat it would be better. 9
• Value: $1.50 for a cookie that’s vegan and gluten-free AND TASTES GREAT!! 10
• Overall: My first choice for a cookie now. 10

Babycakes NYC
130 East 6th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(213)623-5555

Hours of Operation
Monday: 10am-8pm
Tuesday-Wednesday: 10am-10pm
Thursday-Saturday: 10am-11pm
Sunday: 10am-8pm