Cookies from an Island Bakery

When we visited Mull on the west coast of Scotland I came across a little bakery in the colorful settlement of Tobermory. Those of you who watch BBC/ CBeebies will maybe recognize Tobermory from the popular children’s program Balamory. Because of this the place is full of wide eyed little children looking for the homes of Miss Hoolie, PC Plum and Susie Sweet. Even I got exited when I first saw the colored houses coming into view. But nothing compared to the impatient anticipation of spotting a bakery!

The Island bakery turned out to be the home of the most wonderful organic cookies in the world. I bought some boxes, but they didn’t last very long. I remember one, with the shortbread, was opened and finished on the small island of Iona (peaceful home to a beautiful abbey) and the oat crumbles were finished soon after that. I think I stocked up on them when leaving the island via Tobermory on the Ferry to Kilchoan. After that I looked everywhere for those cookies. Small chance of finding them in Holland, you think, but on entering an organic food store in Amsterdam I struck gold! And I took the opportunity to taste the ‘lemon melts’, (lemon butter cookies with white chocolate), I hadn’t tasted before. They are perfect too! My admiration for these cookies comes from the fact that this bakery uses so few ingredients (and organic!) to create a great cookie. Where other cookie boxes show a list of 27 ingredients, they use 5! Tastier and healthier, a great example. So I couldn’t resist making my own buttery lemon cookies with white Valrhona chocolate coating. They were yummy if I say so myself, but very different from the Island Bakery ones. On their website you can read they use pure lemon oil in the cookies, which explains why they taste so much more lemony than mine.

Island Bakery Organics
Tobermory
Isle of Mull
www.islandbakery.co.uk