What does 'handmade' mean - who are you trying to kid?!
Ok, OK, I'll admit it. We don't mix our ingredients in a little mixing bowl and stir it with a wooden spoon, nor do we cut each biscuit from dough with a little knife. We have indulged our busy biscuiteers with labour-saving devices such as mixers powered by the magic of electricity, and an oven that plugs in to the wall, rather than having a fire in it. I may even admit that we have a machine that portions the biscuit dough. However, the scale of our production is tiny in comparison to the behemoths of the industrial biscuit world. Much of what we do is done by hand - including hand-dipping the chocolate biscuits (sorry for the occasional choc dribble!); pressing a chunk of stem ginger gently into the centre of each and every one of our chocolate gingers; and packing all our biscuits not with robots, but by human hand.
I hope that as well as telling you something about how we physically make our biscuits, the phrase 'handmade' gives you an idea of the size and nature of our business. In between writing copy for this website, the boss-man Joe (that's me) is an occasional fork-lift driver, stand-in biscuit dipper, maintenance man, coffee maker and telephonist. Ring us up, and more often than not it's the owner of the bakery who will answer. Small is good. It's something we're proud of. We hope the tag 'handmade' tells you quickly that Mr McVitie we certainly aren't.

Where do you get your ingredients from?
Well, it has to be said that there aren't many lemon trees or wild-growing ginger on the Isle of Mull. So our ingredients come from a variety of sources, but we always select the best, not necessarily the cheapest. That means that we insist everything is organic, and chosen for taste over all other criteria. We try to source as close to home as we can for those ingredients where it's possible - such as with our flour, oats, butter which are all UK sourced. The more exotic ingredients come from exotic places - like citrus oils from Sicily and Stem Ginger from China. When shipping ingredients in and biscuits out however, we always use surface transport, NEVER airfreight.

Why do you use palm fat? Isn't it responsible for deforestation of tropical rainforest?
In most of our biscuits we use a small proportion of palm fat, in addition to butter. It is derived from the fruit of the oil palm tree, grown in tropical climates. Very few vegetable oils are naturally solid at room temperature, unless they have been hydrogenated. Because we need solid fats for biscuit making, and don't want to use hydrogenated fats with all their trans-fatty acids, palm fat is the ideal choice for us.
However, we're also aware that palm oil production is blamed for the frightening rate of deforestation of tropical rain forest, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia, which threatens the survival of the orang-utan, as well as many other species.
We therefore only use palm oil that has come from sustainable sources, grown on plantations that have NOT been created from tropical forest clearance. Our suppliers are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which lays down strict rules governing how the plantations are managed, that ensure sound environmental practices that don't threaten valuable wild habitats.

Is that it? No other questions to answer?
For the moment, yes. I've got to go and load up an order of biscuits. Give me a minute or two.