Another Pamela's Review

I found one of the missing packs of organic cookie samples.  Paul is now only accused of eating two of them by himself.  It was the Dark Chocolate-Chocolate Chunk option.

I liked these.  They were very chocolate-y.  Dark chocolate.  The chunks didn't have the same deep, rich, dark chocolate flavour, but they were a good match to the cookie.  I loved that the chunks were just soft enough to melt in my mouth without being all melted on the cookie.  The cookie itself was a good balance between crunchy and chewy.  It wasn't soft and floppy when I held it, but it was easy to bite and dissolved while I chewed while still having texture. I would describe the texture a little bit like chewing sugar crystals, except they were chocolate.  I liked these cookies.

We tried the corn bread mix this week.  We weren't planning to use it, but Paul was making a brisket and we needed something to eat with it.  What about corn bread?  Okay.  We started to read the directions and found an additional recipe for Cranberry Orange Corn Muffins.  We made those.

These corn muffins were good and will be made again.  We loved the cranberry orange combo.  Question is, will we purchase this mix or make our own?  It was difficult to separate the super yummy flavour from what, specifically, the mix gave to the muffin.  This was made more difficult by the fact that we baked these on the bottom rack (brisket was still in the oven) so they stuck to our liners and the "crusts" were a little thicker.

You can see the stuck bits in Alayna's picture.  Yes, she really likes brisket.

These corn muffins were good and will be made again.  We loved the cranberry orange combo.  Question is, will we purchase this mix or make our own?  It was difficult to separate the super yummy flavour from what, specifically, the mix gave to the muffin.  This was made more difficult by the fact that we baked these on the bottom rack (brisket was still in the oven) so they stuck to our liners and the "crusts" were a little thicker.

The texture on these were spot on for the way we like corn bread.  While they were light muffins they had that cornmeal feel in the mouth.  We like that.  Our last homemade cornbread had too much, because we used some rather coarse cornmeal.

Pamela's, again

I ♥♥♥ these cookies!  The Lemon Shortbread cookies are delicious.  I savored each and every bite of each one of the cookies I had from this box.  I was sad that I had to share them with the kids.  I was disappointed the kids liked them.  I was vexed that Paul had more than one when he said he did not like them.  He says they were too strong.  I thought the intense lemon flavour was perfect.  The words that come to mind to describe the flavour: lemon, refreshing, light, clean, crisp, rich, mmmmm.  Texture wise they were perfect; firm enough to take a real bite, but soft enough the they almost dissolved in my mouth, small nuggets of something throughout the cookie that burst with extra flavour.  Yes, I will be buying these.  Yes, they will be for ME, the only person in the family that doesn't even need to eat gluten free.  I need to stop thinking about these cookies, I think I'm drooling.

Pancakes.  We checked out a kids gluten free cookbook from the library a couple weeks.  The cover has a pancake face.  Alayna has been asking to make pancakes with a face since.  I don't think Alayna or Cavell have ever had a real pancake, even of the gluten free variety.  Paul has tried a couple of high protein "pancakes" but they weren't good and don't count.  Well, one can imagine Alayna's excitement when she saw the Pamela's Baking & Pancake Mix.

Big success.  Golden, fluffy and tasty.  What more could you ask for in a pancake?  Paul made a triple batch with the kids, who made faces on them with fruit.  Even Lex enjoyed a couple of cakes.  And just to put his Papa coolness over the top, the last cakes where served with leftover birthday ice cream with cherries and chocolate sauce on top.

There is a little over 2 batches left.  Waffles do not tempt us.  We have perfected our waffle recipe and make a double batch about every week.  Now we need to decide if we will try crepes or muffins with it, or just have another pancake meal.  This is a mix I can see keeping on hand in the pantry.  Paul says we can and should make our own pancakes from scratch instead.  Seeing how this was the first time we've made pancakes says that we "can't" do that.  If we do, we will have to experiment to find The Recipe.  If we try pancake recipes, they will be competing with these.

A couple of updates.  I was looking at the picture of the organic cookies' box.  It seems there were three more cookie packs of another, unknown to me, flavour.  I did not get a taste of them, I don't even know what they were!  I do know I found one of the wrappers in the living room in the kids' pillow corner, but that was the PB Chocolate Chip flavour.  But, I put the box on the top shelf after I found the wrapper.  It does make me wonder where the last three went.  I have my suspicions that it was Paul.
Also, Paul actually liked the Chocolate Chunk Pecan Shortbread, obviously more than the Lemon Shortbread.  He thought they were good.  But, I don't think he liked them enough to bother buying them.

More Pamela's

The mystery has been solved!  My sister's friend's wife works at Pamela's Products.  I guess she shared about our family of Celiacs and we became the recipients of a large sample package.  Thank you, Stephanie, Stephanie's friend, Stephanie's friend's wife, and Pamela's Products.  Now for more of our product reviews.

Chocolate Chip Mini Cookies.  Yum.  I should probably compare these to the Famous Amos cookies but it has been a looong time since I've tasted those.  I happened to have some Chips Ahoy Saturday.  These really are very similar, except the Chips Ahoy* are a little bigger and have more chocolate chips.  Pamela's Chocolate Chip Mini Cookies are drier, in a crunchy way, which is still a tastey way.  That's a good thing when it is what you want, which is what I want from this type of cookie.
* I am talking about the original, blue bag Chips Ahoy.


Ginger Mini Snapz.  I don't remember eating ginger cookies before the family needed to eat gluten free.  Then, I only bought the Mi-Del version because they were available at our regular grocery store and would be an acceptable substitute/improvement for graham crackers in the crust of our traditional Thanksgiving pumpkin cheesecake.  Well, these taste like that, I think, it's been awhile.  These have a strong flavour; tingle you tongue strong, which, in my opinion, is good for a ginger cookie.

We liked all three versions of the Simplebites cookies (remember the Extreme Chocolate Mini Cookies from the previous post?).  They are what one expects from a packaged snack cookie, even a regular gluten version.  They aren't "to die for!"  They aren't the best cookie you will ever eat.  They are the kind of cookies you technically buy for the kids, but you will nibble on one now and then, and maybe pop another in your mouth here or there because these are enjoyable.  Then you realize that you have probably eaten half of the kids' cookies, because, while they have been put out of reach of the children, you can still reach them.  Or maybe that is just me (and Paul)?

I'm sorry to say we had some "fails" in our sampling.  The boxed version of the Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookies (Cavell is holding the box) and the Organic cookies: we sampled the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip and the Chocolate Chunk Pecan Shortbread.  We were also given samples of the Espresso Chocolate Chunk Cookies, but we aren't fans of the taste or smell of coffee items, so Paul is giving those to someone at work.

I had the same problem with the Chocolate Chip and PB Chocolate Chip cookies.  They were too soft.  Just holding a cookie felt like it was going to come apart in my fingers, or my thumb was going to poke thru from the bottom as the cookie fell around.  There was some actual drooping of the cookie as I held it.  I didn't feel like I could really bite the cookies.  It was like they came apart when I started to bite them.  While they weren't actually dry, the powdery texture they became in my mouth made them seem dry.

The pecan cookie was dry and hard, but still broke easily.  While I could bite it, it just exploded into crumbs in my mouth.  Those crumbs were rather tasteless. There wasn't much chocolate chunk to try and make up for the lack of flavour either.  Maybe this is actually a flaw of any pecan shortbread?  It's been a few years since I had a Keebler Sandies and I wasn't a fan of them anyway.

Not to worry, as you can see we have more items to review, and I'm certain the positives will out weigh these negatives.

Pamela's Products

Thursday we received a large, mysterious package; addressed to me from Pamela's Products.

I hadn't ordered anything and neither had Paul.  While we enter any blog giveaway for gluten free items we read, neither of us had won any, or if we had, we hadn't given our name or address to anyone.
There was NO information about WHY we had received it!  We even called our moms to check if it was a gift.  Nothing.  But, we were not going to complain when we saw what was inside.  We'll even share our own review on the items we received.


Simplebites Extreme Chocolate Mini Cookies. Not only was there a regular package, there was a big box of individually wrapped cookies. We had some of those while revealing the rest of the loot.

These really were extremely chocolate-y!  You know it's good when, the next morning, you find empty wrappers in the kitchen.  Yes, the children went downstairs in the morning and helped themselves to some more cookies.  I put them on the top shelf of the pantry.  By the end of the day, the parents had a couple as well.


Friday afternoon, I noticed that there was a little snip out of the top of a now open bag of Chocolate Chunk Cookie Mix.  I think Cavell was a little disappointed when he only saw powder inside.  Paul made the cookies that night.  We really like that we only had to add a stick of butter and an egg.  Sometimes when we buy a gluten free mix, we feel like we have to add everything to the mix except the rice flour!  The bag says it makes 18-20 cookies.  What!?!?  We used our regular, #50, cookie scoop and only had enough dough for 12.  They did take the whole 20 minutes to bake, which seemed a long time for this size cookie, but was just right for these.

These were very yummy.  Paul liked them enough that the children did not get to try any!  We loved the cocoa powder throughout the cookie, and may try it in our own recipe.  We loved the huge volume of chocolate chunks, and will have to add more chocolate to our own recipe.  Really, I wouldn't mind buying a bag to have on hand in the pantry.  But, $6 for 12 cookies?  We wouldn't be making them every week.

We will share the rest in future posts.