Ben’s Cookies vegan chocolate chunk

It is actually pretty hard to find a good vegan cookie these days. Now I don’t mean biscuits – like you’re bourbons, Jammie Dodgers, Pink Panthers etc – I mean actual cookies. Like the homemade kind. I have found that very few places offer a proper cookie, and those that do tend to be either way too expensive, or are just very lazily made with little to no flavour. The only times I have had good vegan cookies are when I have bought them from an independent seller at a vegan only market or specialist event. Which means that they are not readily available should the craving arise.

I can of course bake my own cookies but I am not a great baker, nor is it really possible for me to make cookies and just carry them around with me on days out just in case I fancy a sweet cookie as a snack during my day. Sometimes you just want a little pick me up, but don’t necessarily want a full blown dessert or a specialist made treat like Doughnut Time.

So thank the vegan stars for Ben’s Cookies. This brand has been around for years and are scattered throughout the world. We have 7 stores in London alone, and the stores are always packed. I have to admit that they have been a bit slow on the vegan uptake, as I only noticed they released a vegan flavour about 4 years ago, and that was all they had on offer for those whole 4 years. Nowadays, they have a whopping two option on their menu. So not a great choice I admit, but I suppose it is a good start.

The first and in my opinion the most consistent, is their chocolate crunch cookie. It is essentially a chocolate chip cookie, but instead of using chocolate chips they just use massive slabs of chocolate in their dough. Which I am not complaining about at all, but still giving a heads up.

In my opinion these cookies are the perfect cookie, in the sense that they are crisp around the edge, but soft and fluffy in the middle. I am not a fan of crispy cookies that just crumble into dust as soon as you bite into them, and I also think that having a crispy cookie doe this recipe would just ruin the cookie. The chunks are indeed chunks. They are solid and crunchy, and have a very satisfying crack when you bite into them, whilst the cookie dough itself is very soft and light and works well to soften the hardness of the chunks. If it was all soft or it was all crunchy, then I think the cookie would just fall flat.

So yes it is a good cookie, but honestly it is not hard to get chocolate chip right. It is probably the easiest flavour out there and requires very little creativity with it. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of work goes into their non-vegan options, that include flavours such as matcha and white chocolate, coconut and caramel. I would argue that all of these could easily be made vegan friendly, but alas we must settle for the basics of chocolate. Whilst it is good that they do at least have vegan options, it is a little disappointing that the offerings are so bland in comparison to their non-vegan ones. Seems a little unfair, right?

Each cookie on its own is £2.95, which I think may be a bit pricey for a cookie. Granted, they are the size of a side plate, but still seem a little overpriced. However Ben’s Cookies are clever and they offer boxes of cookies which greatly reduces the cost of each cookie down to between £1 and £2 depending on the size you pick. Whenever my husband and I fancy Ben’s Cookies (which admittedly isn’t too often as we are both big doughnut lovers) we will get a pack of 7 which costs £11, which means each cookie is worth roughly £1.50. I personally think this is far more reasonable. We also do not eat all of the cookies in one sitting and find that they tend to last about 3 days, if left in a sealed container or with a cover over them. By the third day they are slightly less fluffy and definitely starting to be a bit stale and so a bit more crumbly, but they are still tasty and there is little impact on the flavour other than the more crumbly texture.

Overall: 7/10. It’s a good offering, even if it is a little simple.

T xxx