Personal Shopper

There’s huge demand for gluten-free products these days, so we tried some of the options available to coeliacs and others following a gluten-free diet. We chose biscuits with an element of chocolate. The Gluten Free Pantry Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies 9/10 200g, €3.75 Buttery and rather delicious, these Irish-made cookies were very popular with our testers, who said they would not have known they were gluten-free. 469 calories per 100g. Foods of Athenry Cookie Shots 8/10 120g, €3.49 Made by the Lawless family in Co Galway, these ‘bite-size brownie biscuits’ are also dairy-free and vegan. They have a good texture and chocolate flavour. The size means there are only 18 calories per (very small) biscuit and 456 per 100g. Schar Gluten Free Milk Chocolate Nobbles 8/10 150g, €2.99 Nice crisp biscuit texture with a pronounced coconut flavour and 32pc milk chocolate. We liked the fact these come as three packs of four. Testers felt they would be less tempted to eat the whole packet at once. 517 calories per 100g. Kelkin Gluten Free Oat Cookies, Choc Chip 6/10 150g, €2.47 With a crumbly, grainy texture and oaty flavour, these cookies divided our testers. The chocolate flavour was virtually undetectable. 533 calories per 100g. Nairn’s Gluten Free Oat Dark Choc & Coconut Chunky Biscuit Breaks 4/10 160g, €2.99 These come in four packets of three biscuits each, with 478 calories per 100g. Our testers felt that the texture was neither one thing nor the other – neither crisp nor crumbly. Disappointing.