Maryland Choc Chip, Oatmeal & Honey

Product name: Maryland Choc Chip, Oatmeal & Honey
Purchase details: £1.00 for a 200g packet or two for £1.00 (Poundworld)
Calories: 51 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK

I must confess that I only bought these Maryland Choc Chip, Oatmeal & Honey cookies to make use of the multibuy offer when I was buying some other biscuits! Initially, I didn’t think they looked that exciting, but on noticing the magical word ‘new’ in the corner of the golden wrapper, I realised I couldn’t remember having had any cookies with honey in them before.

The packaging contained inviting images of oats and honey which, unusually, looked more enticing than the photos of the biscuits themselves which looked like standard chocolate chip cookies. However, the treat was described as being ‘choc full of yumminess’ and contained 6% oatmeal and 3% honey, in addition to the 16% chocolate chips.

The cookies were made by Burton’s Foods and contained no artificial flavours or colours, no GM ingredients and no hydrogenated fats and oils. They were quite dark in appearance, inside and out, compared to other cookies, particularly when considering another Maryland offering – Strawberry & White Choc.

I quickly realised that the scent was a cross between that of a standard cookie and flapjack. The latter seemed to be caused by the honey and oats and I was kicking myself for not having thought of the connection earlier!

Despite the quantity of chocolate chips varying in each biscuit, their taste was pretty strong in every bite and it was far and away the main flavour element. There was also a baked aspect to the taste which wasn’t usual for this type of cookie. However, neither the oats nor honey seemed particularly noticeable in themselves as additional flavours, at first. I did then find, though, that the honey released a delicate and almost floral sweetness which created a nice contrast with the comparatively bitter chocolate. I found that dipping the biscuits in tea also released more of the honey’s juices, although I preferred to eat them au natural.

These really crunchy cookies didn’t provide an obviously ground-breaking experience but they were different enough for me to choose them over standard chocolate chip cookies in future. Apart from anything else, the flapjack-like element meant they tasted a little more homemade than most mass-produced biscuits.

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7.5/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Maryland Big & Chunky (white choc chunk brownie)

Product name: Maryland Big & Chunky (white choc chunk brownie)
Calories: 127 for a 25g cookie
Country of origin: UK 

I was recently given a goodie bag as a thank you gift and, amongst other things, it contained this white choc chunk brownie Maryland Big & Chunky cookie.  

As a ‘snack pack’, I know that this individually wrapped biscuit was from a larger multipack, but it was still very well presented in a pretty, metallic purple wrapper that contained a photograph of the cookie. 

Made by Burton’s Biscuits Company, I was pleased to see that the cookie contained both white chocolate (15%) and milk chocolate (13%) ‘chunks’ rather than the slightly less satisfying ‘chips’. Although these appeared to be relatively sparse (there were far fewer than the packaging suggested!), the white chunks in particular, were visibly mixed into the cocoa-coloured biscuit. The chocolate cookie looked quite hard and dry but, on breaking it in two, there was a slight flexibility there, and it was slightly darker on the inside which suggested it might have been a bit more moist than it initially appeared. 

I noticed a chocolatey aroma on opening the wrapper and, up close, the quality of this reminded me of ginger. It wasn’t the most amazing scent in the world but it had something about it that caught in the back of the throat. 

The biscuit was generally crunchy but, as suspected, it was slightly softer in the middle. I think this was to make it seem a bit like a brownie but it wasn’t nearly soft enough for this and, unfortunately, it gave the impression of being a bit stale instead. I also found the milk chocolate chunks to be quite soft and crumbly but, thankfully, the white chocolate seemed to have a bit more substance to it and improved the overall texture considerably.

The cookie itself had quite a bitter chocolate taste which the white chocolate broke up a bit. It was pretty pleasant and chocolatey but there just wasn’t nearly enough white chocolate in there for my liking. However, I definitely found this Big & Chunky product to be more interesting than basic cookies – it just wasn’t as good as other biscuits on the market. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7/10
Overall score: 7.13/10

Maryland Strawberry & White Choc

Product name: Maryland Strawberry & White Choc
Purchase details: £0.49 for a 200g packet (Home Bargains)
Calories: 103 per two biscuit serving (51 per biscuit)
Country of origin: England 

This metallic pink packet of limited edition Maryland Strawberry & White Choc cookies caught my eye in the Summer since they were so cheap and contained my favourite type of chocolate! I may have only just got around to opening them but that was in no way down to a lack of excitement over trying them.

As a general rule, I find that Maryland biscuits look more attractive on the wrapper than they do in reality, with the cookies tending to be more bumpy than knobbly (there is a difference, honest!). This particular product image showed visible white chocolate as well as pink strawberry pieces. The real-life biscuits didn’t look identical but there were still appetising in appearance. Their pale shade made them look more like shortbread than cookies (particularly without any dark-coloured chocolate chips), and the ‘sweetened strawberry puree pieces’ that accounted for 3% of the product weren’t as vivid a hue as the packet had suggested. See the black dot on my picture? That’s one! To be fair, they did look juicier and more of a peach colour, on the base of the cookies. As for the white chocolate chips, these seemed plentiful (contributing to 17% of the biscuits), and they looked nicely chunky.

When it comes to dried strawberry, I like it, but I do find it can sometimes be too sweet and sickly in these kinds of products. On opening this Burton’s Biscuit Co product, there was an immediate fruity aroma and, whilst this subsided slightly, a buttery biscuit scent with a hint of berry remained. The fruity taste was also very noticeable in the biscuits and was more spread out than I thought it would be. I’d expected a strawberry hit here and there but, instead, each mouthful was full of a sweet but not too overpowering slightly medicinal taste – it was surprisingly yummy!

The biscuits themselves also had a buttery taste which the white chocolate added a creaminess and slight sweetness to here and there. It wasn’t the most noticeable white chocolate flavour I’ve ever come across but it did a decent job.

The cookies’ texture was pleasantly crunchy with a cool solidness from the white chocolate chips. I also found that dipping them in tea softened them considerably as well as releasing a further flavour.

These Maryland Strawberry & White Choc biscuits were a lovely twist on standard chocolate chip cookies and I’d happily buy them again. Bargain! 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7.5/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.38/10

Maryland Gooeys: Triple choc

Product name: Maryland Gooeys: Triple choc
Purchase details: £1.00 for a pack of 10 biscuits (Asda)
Calories: 79 per biscuit
Country of origin: UK

For the last of my Maryland Gooeys reviews, I hoped I’d saved the best until last with this Triple choc version. Despite the front of the wrapper containing exactly the same description as the Hazelnut and Chocolate varieties (‘crunchy cookie filled with a gooey chocolatey centre’), these biscuits offered the differences of the cookie itself being a chocolate one, and the chocolate chips being white (my favourite!) rather than milk.

Not to be fooled by the golden wrapper that I would normally associate with caramel, I nervously opened the packet in the hope that these biscuits really would be a wonderfully chocolatey experience. 

The first thing I noticed was how much better and stronger the smell of these cookies was. The aroma was like ‘proper’ chocolate biscuits with an almost home-baked element to it. Appearance-wise, they also looked like pretty standard chocolate biscuits, although the white chocolate chips provided a contrast by contributing to 10% of the product. The downside to these was that most of them had been browned which suggested the cookies had been slightly over-baked. Unlike the milk chocolate chips used in the other versions, though, they didn’t melt between the fingers which was a good thing.

The bases of these biscuits were surprisingly smooth to the touch and they provided a fantastic crunchy crispiness when eaten. The ‘smooth chocolatey flavour filling’ that made up 30% of each cookie, and provided some moisture, had looked the same as the centre of the Chocolate version and it tasted the same too.

What I found slightly bizarre about this product was that, when chewing the biscuits, there wasn’t much flavour, but as soon as I started to swallow, the chocolatiness really started to hit me and tasted almost like a Bourbon biscuit – yay! Unfortunately, this also meant that the flavour of the white chocolate chips was not noticeable. 

I think these Maryland Gooeys: Triple choc were the best of the three available varieties and they did deliver on the promise of chocolate flavours. However, it was a shame that these tastes weren’t very evident until the end of each mouthful. 

Appearance: 7.5/10
Aroma: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Texture: 7.5/10
Overall score: 7.25/10