Melt in the Mouth (Maryland Cookies)

Member Name: LauraElliott

Product:	Maryland Cookies
Date:	26/02/04 (3572 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Taste lovely, Good price, Nice packaging

Disadvantages: Can cost a lot if you buy from the wrong place (i.e Tesco when they're not on special offer!) I tend to stock up when I see them on 3 for a £1 offer!

Americans usually describe a cookie as a thin and sweet small cake. Different countries have different words for cookies, i.e. we call them biscuits sometimes, Germans call them keks, Spanish call them galletas and Italians call them Amaretti.

A brief history of the cookie?

Biscuits can be traced back to the second century in Rome. Biscuits then were hard, and thin wafers, which had a low water content. They held very little moisture and so they were the ideal food to store, as they wouldn't turn to mould quickly.

..and how about chocolate cookies?.?

The first chocolate chip cookies were invented in 1930 by Ruth Wakefield of Whitman, MA, who ran a restaurant called Toll House. One day she was experimenting with the recipe of a grand cookie called the "butter drop-do." Having a bar of semi-sweet chocolate on hand, she chopped it into pieces and stirred the chunks of chocolate into the cookie dough. She assumed that the chocolate would melt and spread throughout each cookie. Instead the chocolate bits held their shape and created a sensation. She called her new creation the Toll House Crunch Cookies.

Word of the cookie spread and it became so popular that the Nestle Company, seeing the potential, developed a scored semisweet chocolate bar with a small cutting implement so that making the chocolate chunks would be easier. Miss Wakefield's cookie recipe was printed on the wrapper of each bar.

Today the chocolate chip cookie remains a favourite choice among cookie connoisseurs.

As for Maryland cookies?

They are created by a British company called Burton?s foods, which was formed when them and Horizons got together. You may be interested to know that this company also make Jammie Dodgers, Cadbury?s fingers, Wagon Wheels, Lyon?s digestives, and Cadbury?s new mallo chocolate teacakes. Maryland?s recipe was brought over to us from America in 1956, and unsurprisingly is now Britain?s

most popular best-selling cookie!

Fact: Over 12 Billion Maryland cookies are sold worldwide each year. This is enough cookie?s to stretch right across America, from the Pacific, through the state of Maryland, to the Atlantic Ocean.

They do quite a range of flavours, including my new favourite ones which are triple chocolate cookie creams? two cookies stuck together with a thin layer of chocolate icing in the middle ? delicious! They remind me of the original style of bourbon creams-Mmmm! The other flavours include double chocolate, normal chocolate, coconut, chocolate chip and hazelnut and I think I?ve also seen one with raisins and fruit in. A different colour packaging represents each flavour:

Coconut ? light blue
Traditional chocolate ? red
Double Choc ? purple
Choco hazelnut ? brown
Choco creams ? red and yellow

Each of these flavours comes in 150g quantity in wrapped foil packaging. In some places you may also find them in extra value packs of 300g. Although I have not seen the 500g bumper packs, I am also informed that these are in production.

Although Maryland cookies are originally from America, they are actually made in Blackpool - Devonshire Road, Llantarnam (South Wales) and Dublin in Ireland.

New products include the delicious cookie creams which I have already mentioned are my favourite, Maryland cookie bars which come in normal choc chip and caramel, Maryland tear and share 200g bags and their mini snack packs 180g (6 x 30g) which they say are great for lunch boxes and travelling ? handy!

All of the Maryland cookies I have tried have that melt in the mouth flavour, like they have just come out of the oven. The chocolate chips taste fresh and the biscuit texture is crumbly ? but not so much that you will get flaky crumbs everywhere. It is a biscuit that has been created ?just right?.

In many pound saver shops you will be able to purchase your cookies at the b
argai
n price of three packs for a pound! The normal recommended retail price for the cookies is about 50p a packet for the normal cookie and 65p a pack for the cookie creams.

I have also found a site, which is handy for people who live abroad but want to buy British products. They stock many Maryland products. The site is: www.britsuperstore.com (the prices are quite a bit higher than what the products would cost in a standard supermarket though).

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