gluten-free eats

Goodie Girl Mint Cookies are thinner and, dare I say, mintier than a Girl Scout Thin Mint, but taste very much like the cookies I remember, right down to the occasional hit of salt in an otherwise unremarkable (but crisp) chocolate cookie. The chocolate coating is a bit greasy, but it's been a long time since I had a Thin Mint, so it's possible that's authentic as well. If you like(d) Thin Mints, you'll probably like these.

Each box has 24 cookies in a single sleeve, but I easily finished them off before they got stale.

Certified GF. Kosher.

Current Ingredients: confectionery coating (sugar, vegetable oil [palm kernel and/or palm], cocoa powder, processed with alkali, buttermilk, soy lecithin, natural flavors), gluten-free whole grain oat flour, cane sugar, palm oil, cocoa processed with alkali; contains 2% or less of: molasses, sodium bicarbonate, salt, inulin, soy lecithin, peppermint oil, ammonium bicarbonate.

Goodie Girl cookies are so quietly gluten-free I have looked at them multiple times at my local Kroger before finding them in Walmart's GF section, picking them up to take a good look, and finally seeing the tiny little certified GF logo on the lower corner of the box. They have a Girl Scout cookie vibe with colorful boxes and playful flavors and even have a thin mint analogue. More on that later.

I started my journey with their S'mores Sandwich Cookies: One chocolate cookie, one cinnamon graham cookie, with sweet vanilla creme filling between. They don't taste like a S'more, exactly, but they are tasty and you can at least see where they're coming from. One box contains 24 cookies, but they're all in a single sleeve and only stayed fresh about ten days, so by the time I finished them the cookies were getting a bit soft, but they still tasted good. I liked these so much I bought them again and took a page from the Girl Scout Handbook and froze the next box to see if it would stop them from getting stale, but they basically became just as soft in the freezer. Still good though.

Certified GF, vegan, and kosher.

Current Ingredients: cane sugar, gluten free whole grain oat flour, rice flour, palm oil, high oleic sunflower oil (or canola oil), tapioca starch, invert sugar. Contains less than 2% each of the following: cocoa (processed with alkali), soy lecithin, corn starch, inulin, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, cinnamon, natural flavors, organic maltodextrin, tricalcium phosphate, ammonium bicarbonate.

Nature's Bakery Fig Bar: Raspberry: I mostly gave these a try because they had ingredients I could eat. I was pleasantly surprised by how soft and tender the cookie part is, though I can't say it has a flavor beyond being pleasantly whole grain. The filling is sweet and crunchy with fig seeds, and I could really taste the raspberries. Could I taste the figs? Maybe, in that they were toning the raspberry flavor down in an earthy kind of way.

This is called a bar, but really it's a Fig Newtonesque cookie, two per package, with six packages in a box. I found them at Target in the granola/protein/snack bar aisle, but they're too sweet for me to be anything but a dessert. They're also marked "low sodium" (70 mg for two cookies), but they always make me very thirsty, so idk.

In addition to Raspberry, they come in Blueberry and Pomegranate. If you're in the market for a GF Fig Newton analogue, you might give these a try. Though for whatever reason they don't have one that's just fig.

Certified GF, vegan, kosher, non-GMO. Made in a dedicated peanut and tree nut free facility.

Current Ingredients: Brown Rice Flour, Brown Rice Syrup, Fig Paste, Raspberry Jam (Naturally Milled Sugar, Cane Sugar, Glycerin, Rice Starch, Raspberries, Apple Powder, Natural Flavor, Pectin, Citric Acid, Locust Bean Gum), Canola Oil, Cane Sugar, Gluten Free Five Grain Flour (Amaranth, Quinoa, Millet, Sorghum, Teff), Date Paste, Whole Grain Oats, Glycerin, Flaxseed, Leavening (Monocalcium Phosphate, Baking Soda), Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum, Natural Flavor, Citric Acid.

This pumpkin bread from Snixy Kitchen bakes up into a lovely brown loaf with warm spices and a tender, moist crumb.

I got serious and bought a metal 9 x 5 inch loaf pan for this one, since glass conducts heat differently and can dry out the crust of a quick bread, which did seem to be the case for the last pumpkin bread I made. I used Libby's canned pumpkin again and followed the recipe exactly—except I used apple cider in place of the milk component, and I again left out the cinnamon for reasons—and I was very happy with the results. In the metal pan, the outside of the loaf turned a deep brown (next time I might give it an aluminum foil tent near the end of the cooking time), but didn't get tough. I cooked it 65 minutes, let it cool on a rack for 20 minutes, and then removed it from the pan to cool completely.

Compared to the Pumpkin Bread with Maple Glaze from The Bojon Gourmet that I brought you last month (and baked in a glass pan, which might have contributed to some of the textural differences):

• both are gum-free, nut-free, soy-free, and dairy-free
• both use oat flour, sweet rice flour, and tapioca starch, then teff flour (Snixy) or millet flour (Bojon)
• both offer some substitutions, including for the oat flour, but both rely on the sweet rice flour and eggs
• slightly different spice mixes, Snixy has cloves instead of allspice, and no turmeric
• a slice of the Snixy is softer than the Bojon, which is more dense and easier to pick up
• Snixy did not bake up as impressively tall
• Snixy makes a darker, browner loaf, while Bojon is lighter and oranger

Both are easy to make, bake up well, store nicely in the fridge (and freezer!), are undetectably gluten free, and have good flavor and texture, but I think the Snixy might be my new favorite due to its almost squishy softness and gingerbread vibes. The Snixy recipe doesn't have an accompanying glaze, so I made one with powdered sugar, orange juice, and a splash of vanilla. Next time I might do something more like Bojon's maple glaze (with maybe less maple syrup), which, since it has (vegan) butter in it, is thicker, sets better, and has a more appealing look when poured over the loaf.

Anyway, I'm thrilled that after years of going without pumpkin bread I now have two really great recipes for it. AMAAPB (Ask Me Anything About Pumpkin Bread).

This Pumpkin Bread with Maple Glaze from The Bojon Gourmet bakes up properly tall like a regular quick bread, which was shocking enough, but it also has a lovely moist crumb and slices well. It's also dairy-free, nut-free, and gum-free!

I followed the instructions exactly...except I didn't sift the dry ingredients because in my experience when you sift oat flour it just clumps up again on the other side. Instead I mixed the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the wet in another and then mixed them together and it was fine. But if you follow the instructions, this only take one bowl.

I used Libby's canned pumpkin. Word on the street is that different brands have different liquid contents, and organic canned pumpkin puree can sometimes be more liquidy than conventional and might throw off a recipe developed for a thicker puree. It sounds like Taylor-Tobin used an organic, but thick, puree, and the Libby's worked well here. I used a glass 9 x 5 inch loaf pan and cooked the bread for a full hour. It rose to lofty heights, browned a bit, and developed some rustic cracks along the top.

Contrary to the instructions, which I followed remember, the loaf needs to cool more than an hour before it's ready to glaze. Mine was still warm at that point and the glaze started to melt. Next time I'll give it more like three hours to cool completely. If you don't have that kind of time, or want a loaf that's less sweet, it's perfectly tasty without the glaze. I also left out the turmeric because while that golden color is seductive, I didn't want to risk being able to taste it, but I'm sensitive to flavors. Others might not notice it. I also, for reasons, had to leave out the cinnamon, and I imagine this is even better with it, but it's still very good without.

In short, this is an easy recipe that doesn't take a lot of time or special skills to put together and has great results. I highly recommend it.