gluten-free eats

These Crispy Waffles from Snixy Kitchen cook up with golden brown, with crisp outsides and chewy insides.

They take a little bit of extra effort as you have to whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and then fold them into the batter, but my stand mixer made short work of the task. A hand mixer would also work if you're up to holding on to it for that long. But I have never made waffles that turned out this light and crispy, not even back in the gluten and dairy days, so it's definitely worth it.

The recipe calls for whole milk and butter, but I used Trader Joe's unsweetened almond/cashew/macadamia milk and avocado oil, and had great results. The waffles taste perfectly wonderful without any toppings at all, lightly sweet and eggy, like a fortune cookie or a funnel cake, but they'd be delicious with fresh fruit or a dab of maple butter. Despite the oat flour, which you can't really taste, these are mostly starch and do leave a bit of a starchy aftertaste, so some toppings might help counter that.

I doubled the order because four waffles is not enough waffles, and I like to have some in the freezer. They warm up great in the toaster oven/toaster/oven and can easily be eaten out of hand if you're on the go or eating in front of your computer. As I am at this very moment.

I've made Loopy Whisk's focaccia twice now and it has become my go-to focaccia bread. It has a crisp crust on all sides and a tender and chewy middle with an open crumb. I shove some sliced Kalamata and Castelvetrano olives in the top and they stay soft and don't dry out or burn in the oven and give the bread a nice salty/briny/greasy element.

I make it exactly as written and it looks just like the pictures. It instantly became my preferred method to make focaccia. Before I was routinely making Bakerita's focaccia bread in an 9 x 9 inch metal pan, and it was very good, but difficult to get out and the bottom never got crispy. Though it always crisped up nicely when rewarmed in the oven, so that's 100% down to the cooking method. There's nothing stopping me from making that recipe in a sheet pan except that it has rice flour in it, and I'm trying to cut back on my rice intake. The other focaccia bread that I've shared here before is Snixy Kitchen's focaccia, which did get crispy all the way around when I cooked in a 8 x 8 glass pan as it practically boiled in the oil, but it has to rise twice, and that really drags out the process.

Loopy Whisk's focaccia is rice-free and only rises once, in the pan. I put it in a quarter sheet pan lined with parchment paper, as recommended. I put that sheet pan on top of a heavy duty sheet pan that preheats along with the oven, and this helps give the bottom crust some extra heat and intensify the crunch. The dough expands to fill the sheet pan as it rises, then it shrinks away from the sides as it cooks, giving it a nice crust along the edge (unlike when made in a cake pan) and it literally slides right out of the pan.

All three of these focaccia breads taste great and, thanks to the psyllium husk, are very satisfying to chew. They're also easier to make than a loaf of bread, so if you've never made gluten-free bread before, but want to give it a try, this is a nice, low-stakes place to start. It helps a lot to have a stand mixer, and I do, but if you've got the verve, you can mix the dough by hand.

All three of these breads freeze well, too. I just wrap them in foil and stick them in a ziplock bag. Then when I want bread for dinner, I take out a portion and let it defrost on the counter before popping it in the oven to warm up. To reinvigorate the crisp of the crust, unwrap it first so it gets nice and toasty.

Pamela's Bread Mix: This bag has all the dry ingredients you need to make one loaf of bread, including a little packet of yeast. You just add water, eggs, and oil, throw it in the stand mixer for three minutes and then squeegee it into a loaf pan. The batter is thick and sticky and stays where it's put, so you'll want to smooth out the top with wet or oily fingers to get a nice, even crust. Maybe even press down the batter around the edges of the pan so that it's lower than the center and creates a domed top when it bakes.

The instructions are the bare minimum—no explanation of how you can tell it's done, or how to store it once it is—but it does give directions for making this bread in a bread maker or an oven. There are also instructions for how to turn this mix into dinner rolls (it's the same, only you bake it in muffin cups), and four variations on the plain loaf: molasses, 3 seed, cheese, and herb bread.

It smells really nice while it bakes and creates a firm loaf with the texture of a quick bread, dense with no chew. It tastes slightly sweet and slightly sour in a way that reminds me of baking soda, but as it includes none, I guess we're going to have to blame the millet, which can give baked goods an earthy, slightly burnt taste.

This is dairy free, easy to make, and probably easy to find (I found it in the "natural" section of my local Kroger analogue), but it doesn't have much flavor and I missed the chewiness I get from breads made with psyllium husk. And I still had to clean up the kitchen afterwards! All in all, I'd rather buy a loaf or, sigh, bake one from scratch.

Current Ingredients: Sorghum Flour, Tapioca Flour, White Rice Flour, Sweet Rice Flour, Brown Rice Flour, Evaporated Cane Sugar, Inulin, Millet Flour, Honey, Rice Bran, Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum, Yeast Packet (active dry yeast).

Pamela's Products are manufactured in a Gluten-Free Certified Facility and peanut-free facility. Their products are produced on equipment that processes tree nuts, coconut, eggs, soy, and milk.

Fudge Striped Crunchy Oat Flour Cookies: Well, you know exactly what these are going to be just from the name, but I wanted them to be like the Keebler fudge stripe cookies of my youth and they were not. The oat cookie—the ad copy calls it a "shortbread" which it is not—is indeed crisp and has the occasional crunch of a sugar crystal for added interest, but, and I know it's unsporting to say this about a dessert, they're a little too sweet for me. The chocolate is perfectly fine, but unremarkable. I mean they're fine! But just fine. They're also much thinner than the Fudge Stripe cookies I remember and feel somewhat insubstantial.

Comes in a single sleeve of 24 cookies. Certified GF and kosher.

Current Ingredients: gluten free whole grain oat flour, confectionery coating (sugar, vegetable oil [palm kernel and/or palm], cocoa powder processed with alkali, buttermilk, soy lecithin, natural flavors), cane sugar, palm oil, brown cane sugar. Contains 2% or less of: invert sugar, sodium bicarbonate, natural flavor, soy lecithin, ammonium bicarbonate.

Coco Whip Original: This has the exact vibes of Cool Whip, only dairy-free (and soy-free!):

• silky
• sweet
• found in the freezer case
• doesn't deflate, run, or separate

It has a slight taste of coconut, but it's not overwhelming. I put it on some strawberries and a slice of orange almond loaf and it was a perfectly appropriate topping for a strawberry shortcake, even with the hint of coconut, but it'd also be great in a tropical desert like a banana cream pie, where you can lean into the coconut flavor.

I keep this in the freezer, and it defrosts pretty quickly if you leave it out on the counter. After an hour it softens enough to spoon around the edges of the carton, or you can just dig into it frozen where it'll have the texture of ice cream. You can then put it in the fridge or refreeze it, which makes this a very tasty and convenient topping. I'm looking forward to trying it on top of some gingerbread.

Also comes in a "Light" version with half the fat.

Certified GF & vegan.

Current Ingredients: Filtered Water, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Organic Cane Sugar, Pea Protein, Guar Gum, Sunflower Lecithin, Xanthan Gum, Natural Flavor.

Goodie Girl Magical Animal Crackers: I think we can all agree, the most important thing about animal crackers is what kind of animals we'll be eating. "Magical" ones according to the box. This includes:

• Unicorn
  • on a scooter
  • playing a guitar
  • dabbing
• Mermaid (isn't this at least partly cannibalism??)
  • mermaid hugging/subduing a fish (cannibalism all the way down)
• Dragon
• Narwhal (I'm sorry, but these are real animals?)

Despite its non-magical nature, the narwhal was my favorite because it was a nice shape and noticeably thicker than the other cookies, more like what I expect from an animal cracker. The guitar-playing unicorn was particularly thin as well as being a weird narrow rectangle because the unicorn was at open mic night, I guess, and standing upright on its hind legs. It just raises a lot of questions is all. Anyway. How do they taste? The oat flavor is quite pronounced, which I normally don't mind, but found distracting here, and I missed the traditional animal cracker flavor of lemon or vanilla. So they're not my platonic ideal of an animal cracker, but once I managed my expectations, they were good enough.

Current Ingredients: gluten free whole grain oat flour, cane sugar, palm oil, rice flour, invert sugar. Contains 2% or less of: natural flavors, sodium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, inulin, salt, xanthan gum.

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.