My Aunt Tammy alerted me to Betty Crocker’s new Gluten Free desert mixes. I was excited to learn about that because Aaron has a gluten intolerance and really does better if he is gluten free. Pancake mix, muffins, and cornbread are relatively simple for me to accomplish. Gluten free bread is pretty much an epic failure for me, so I just don’t go there and really try my best to keep bread products he would eat out of the house. Deserts, though, are something we both miss and I just can’t seem to pull out of our budget. Gluten free products and flour alternatives are EXPENSIVE and it’s really hard to justify spending so much money on something I’m only going to use a few times a month at most. The price of the Betty Crocker mixes were around $4.00 and are manageable to be squeezed into the budget a couple times a month.
When Ella and I were at the grocery store last week, I saw that they now carried the gluten free mixes! I really wanted to try the brownies but there weren’t any left, so I settled for the chocolate chip cookies. Something I really liked is that you have the option of making them egg free by following the directions on the back of the box OR you can make them dairy free* by following these directions found on Betty Crocker’s website. I decided to follow the directions as presented on the back of the box since Ella can have butter without any problems.
The cookies were surprisingly good! Definitely a different texture but I’ve come to learn that comparing gluten free products to flour products is like comparing apples to oranges — they have to be judged on their own merits. When I pulled them from the oven, they were nice and puffy but once they cooled, they fell and became more crispy than chewy. The cookies were also very fragile (typical of gf products) and difficult for an almost 2 year old to handle. Then again, Ella thought it was a blast that she got to eat cookie crumbs so it was still a success. The flavor of the cookies themselves didn’t leave anything to complain about! The directions encourage you to store them in an airtight container and that really is necessary. Of course, the true test was the taste buds of the family member who should be gluten free in our house and he gave them a thumbs up! Hooray!
I really hope that next time the brownie mix is in stock because I love brownies with all my heart and soul. While I would LOVE to make these amazing looking gluten free brownies, it just isn’t in the cards at this point in my life. So we’ll stick with the boxed mixes for now until we can enjoy the luxury of gluten free yummies from scratch.
* I did not look at the ingredients on all the different products and in the cookies, the chocolate chips were the only thing that had dairy in them (this is an acceptable “form” of dairy for Ella). Please check the ingredient list yourself before taking my word for it that they are dairy free!
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