![\"Lucy](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/lucy-alexander-left-and-julie-shew-right-4AB6VBCFJFHZTJI6XJ7G2CNNOY.png\")
<\/p>\nAn Auckland company has produced what’s believed to be the country’s first commercially available gluten-free Anzac biscuit.<\/p>\n
Kea Cookies, based in St Johns, had been striving to perfect a gluten-free version of the beloved treat for several years.<\/p>\n
Success finally came with the arrival of new head baker Lucy Alexander, with a fresh perspective leading to a biscuit breakthrough.<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘we’ve been trying for a couple of years and can’t quite get it right’,” said factory manager Julie Shew.<\/p>\n
“She thought about it, substituted ingredients from one of our other recipes, and played around with it until she got it spot on.”<\/p>\n
Alexander said it took around five different trials to nail the perfect texture and flavour for the gluten-free treats.<\/p>\n
The key challenge was reimagining the traditional biscuit without its key ingredient, as oats contained gluten, she said.<\/p>\n
“In the original Anzac recipe, it’s obviously mainly oats and coconuts, but we can’t use oats because they contain gluten, so it’s been substituted with rice flakes and coconut.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lucy Alexander (left) and Julie Shew (right). (Source: Lucy Alexander)<\/p>\n
The resulting bickie was crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and safe for those with gluten intolerances.<\/p>\n
“It’s nice for people to enjoy Anzac biscuits when they usually can’t because they contain gluten,” Alexander said.<\/p>\n
The biscuits were available at the factory shop in St Johns, via the company’s website, and at select FreshChoice supermarkets in Auckland and the South Island.<\/p>\n
Shew said Auckland Council had purchased some for Anzac Day commemoration events at RSAs and that New Zealand Blood use Kea Cookies to give to people who have donated blood.<\/p>\n
“We haven’t quite decided if we’ll do [the gluten-free Anzac biscuit] as a one-off or whether we’ll keep it going.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Auckland company has produced what’s believed to be the country’s first commercially available gluten-free Anzac biscuit. Kea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4318],"tags":[51,13842,105,4434,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-49154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-food-drink","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-nutrition","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114398181879399201","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}