Last year I did a review of Pamela’s Products Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookies. In that review I mentioned how Pamela’s Products is a proud sponsor of the NFCA’s and generously donates cupcake kits for our fabulous Gluten-Free Cupcake Parties. If you want to learn more about this fun and easy community fundraising activity visit our Cupcake Party page.

Among the many other GF products Mambo Sprouts sent my way was two bags of Pamela’s Products baking mixes, Baking and Pancake Mix and the Cornbread and Muffin Mix. Until this recent shipment my exposure to Pamela’s Products was limited to their delicious cookie selection, and of course, their easy to make cupcakes.

First impression of these baking mixes was pretty positive. Both come in nice sunny orange packaging. A pleasant combination of images, colors and fonts used on the packaging brings to mind a warm country kitchen, and begs you to open it to start baking. And that is exactly what I did.

I started with the Baking and Pancake Mix. The blend itself is very fine and primarily consists of a combination of rice flours and starches. Cultured Buttermilk and natural almond meal are also mixed in as welcome addition to the mix. On the package there are simple instruction for standard recipes including pancakes, waffles, muffins, cookies and crepes.

First I used the mix to make pancakes. This resulted in a batch of fluffy, moist pancakes.  Paired with a dab of butter and a splash of syrup, they were positively yummy. Feeling a bit adventurous I attempted crepes next. The batter held up to my poor cooking skills and the flavor was as tasty as the pancakes. I’d say the results of this mix were similar to those of a batch made from scratch but the complex and well blended flour mix make them a bit better and so much easier to make. Though I only made the pancakes and crepes I can easily imagine this mix performing equally well in a wide variety of recipes.

Next, I moved on to the Cornbread and Muffin Mix. This mix consists of a pleasant blend of semi sweet flours combined with organic corn meal. Together they work to make a perfect batch of cornbread. I was completely impressed at this mixes ability to stay moist. The flours blended the cornmeal give this mix a great flavor and texture and add to its versatility. In addition to Cornbread, this mix can be used for muffins, tart crust, sprinkled on the bottom of pizza crust (yummy), and anywhere else you would normally use a cornmeal and flour blend.

After trying out both of these baking mixes I am once again highly impressed at the quality of Pamela’s Products. To learn more about these great products or any of the Products Pamela’s offers visit www.pamelasproducts.com

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Mambo Sprouts Part 4: Breakfast with Barbara’s Bakery

Brown Rice Crisps, Multigrain Puffins, and Honey Rice Puffins

For this review mambo sprouts sent me three boxes of Barbara’s Bakery Cereals. I received a box each of Organic Brown Rice Crisps, Multigrain Puffins, and Honey Rice Puffins. Three great cereals, filled with organic whole grains and natural flavors, and void of all the things that should be missing like gluten, preservatives, and artificial flavors.

All three of these cereals contain whole grain brown rice. As you may know, rice is a very common substitute for ingredients that contain gluten. When white rice is used, the resulting product loses many of the healthy aspects the wheat version would have naturally contained. The alternative, brown rice, contains a healthy dose of protein, fiber, and vitamins. Not only is it healthier but the texture and taste tends to be closer to that of the gluten filled versions. That is why I am very happy when a gluten-free product is made from whole grain brown rice instead.

Brown Rice Crisps
Barbara’s Organic Brown Rice Crisp is a healthier alternative to white rice counter parts. It is very lightly sweetened with organic fruit juice. If you prefer a sweater cereal then tiny bit of your favorite sweetener could be added. Or top this cereal with some fresh fruit to make an even healthier start to your morning. If you enjoy making or eating marshmallow rice crisp squares, Barbara’s Organic Brown Rice Crisp is the perfect ingredient to make those tasty sweet squares not only good, but somewhat good for you too.

Multigrain Puffins
Of the two flavors of Barbara’s Puffin brand cereal I received the Multigrain Puffins were my favorite. A bowl filled with Multigrain Puffins will contain semi-sweet yellow, brown and white squares. The colors are not the result of artificial colors or flavors. Instead they come from the ingredients, all natural whole oats, brown rice, and corn. They stand up to sitting in a bowl of milk perfectly.

Honey Rice Puffins
Barbara’s Honey Rice Puffins are whole grain brown rice squares lightly coated in a thin honey glaze. Though it is the sweetest of the three, they are still not overly sugary. This makes it a great children’s cereal.

In addition to the Multigrain and Honey Rice varieties of Puffin, Barbara’s also comes in Original, Peanut Butter, and Cinnamon flavors. All varieties of puffin include great information on how you can help Barbara’s Bakery help improve life for Puffins. Barbara’s is a sponsor of the Audubon’s Project Puffin, which is working to restore puffins to historic nesting islands in the Gulf of Maine. To learn more about Project Puffin visit www.projectpuffin.org.

To learn more about these great cereals and all the gluten-free products offered by Barbara’s Bakery visit www.barbarasbakery.com.

Before I had a chance to finish the 4 Part Mambo Sprout Review series, Mambo sprouts was kind enough to send another box filled with gluten-free products to review. Stay tuned for reviews that include Pamela’s Products, Ian Gluten-Free Animal Cookies, and much, much more.

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Mambo Sprouts Part 3: Gluten Free Pantry
Brownies, Cookies, and Pancakes!

For this review, Mambo Sprouts sent me 3 of Gluten Free Pantry Baking Mixes. I received a box each of their Chocolate Truffle Brownies Mix, Chocolate Chip Cookie & Cake Mix, Brown Rice Pancake & Waffle Mix. After a busy day of baking and tasting I was pretty pleased with these products.

Gluten Free Pantry’s Chocolate Truffle Brownies Mix was my favorite of the three. I followed the directions and let them chill before eating. The product was a dense, and rich chocolate flavor you expect out of a brownie. I was relieved that the brownies texture was smooth instead of grainy as is often the risk of using gf mixes. Another great thing to note is though the brownies that are made from this mix are comparable to results of using the gluten-free Betty Crocker Mixes, Gluten Free Pantry’s mix is cheaper by almost half.

Gluten Free Pantry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie & Cake Mix came in second mainly because I prefer cookies to be bit chewier. That said, the cookies that were produced by using this mix were pretty tasty.  The cookies them self were crispy and filled with pleasant tasting chocolate chips. The overall flavor was pleasant enough that I am interested in getting another box to try out the cake directions.

My favorite thing about Gluten Free Pantry’s Brown Rice Pancake & Waffle Mix is that is contains more brown rice than white. The more gf foods I try that include at least some brown rice seem to taste better and have a more pleasant texture. The pancakes made from this mix were fluffy and light. Mix in or top with some fresh fruit and they make for a pretty yummy morning. Gluten Free Pantry’s Brown Rice Pancakes & Waffle can make two decent sized batches of pancakes or waffles, or can be used to make Irish Soda Bread. This makes the price, the highest of the three mixes, very reasonable.

To learn more about these and other Gluten Free Pantry Products visit glutenfree.com.

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A while ago I received samples of a muffin mix and a pancake mix from Purely Elizabeth. With most of the NFCA staff off to Chicago for the NRA I finally had enough time to try these out. A certified holistic nutrition counselor, Elizabeth Stein, created Purely Elizabeth in 2009. While receiving her training she began to understand the negative impact the ingredients like sugar, wheat and dairy that are in so many of our favorite treats can have on a persons health. She created her line of mixes to recreate homemade baked goods using healthy ingredients that were beneficial for the body. Purely Elizabeth’s Ultimate Cacao Muffin Mix and Perfect Pancake mix are great examples of her effort to improve foods that are normally guilty pleasures.
The star ingredient in Purely Elizabeth’s Ultimate Cacao Muffin Mix is raw cacao, an ingredient known to be high in antioxidant. The raw cacao adds the chocolaty flavor to the highly nutritious flour mix made of millet flour, almond flour, flax seed, hemp seed and chia seeds. Suggested additional ingredients you will need to make a batch of Purely Elizabeth Ultimate Cacao Muffins includes applesauce, olive oil, agave syrup, almond milk and Vanilla. Using the suggested ingredients helps keep truer to the mixes purpose of being a pure and healthy way to enjoy muffins. But you can also use your preferred sweetener, substitute non-dairy milk to make it dairy-free, or for a more traditional muffin use an egg instead of applesauce. The flexibility of this mix provides a simple and convenient way to gather high quality dry ingredients to make muffins that have the nutrition needed in so many celiac diets.
Purely Elizabeth’s Perfect Pancake mix is a great way to add whole grains to your diet while indulging in this classic but traditionally non-healthy breakfast choice. The mix consists of a blend of 5 whole grain flours paired with 3 super-food seeds. The result is a fluffy yet very filling breakfast packed with protein and fiber.
To learn more about these and all of Purely Elizabeth’s Products visit www.purelyelizabeth.com.

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For this month long celiac awareness campaign Mambo Sprouts has also teamed up with some great gluten-free companies.  Some of those companies have provided them with enough samples of their products to share with some of the amazing GF bloggers for reviews. As the product review blog for the NFCA, Mambo Sprouts has been kind enough to send Gluten Free Hot Products samples from Glutino, Crunchmasters, Gluten Free Pantry, and Barbara’s. I will share my impressions on these samples in a 4 part series, Mambo Sprouts Review Part 1-4.

So, with out much more delay onto the first review.

Mambo Sprouts Review Part 1: Glutino

I received two products from the huge and always growing Glutino Product line, a bag of Chocolate Covered Pretzels and a box of Strawberry Breakfast Bar.

Glutino Chocolate Covered Pretzels are simply amazing. To find a delicious gluten-free pretzel is impressive by itself. Cover that yummy pretzel with premium milk chocolate and you get an extraordinary gluten-free snack. These gluten-free snacks are crunchy and sweet with just a hint of salt. The pretzel itself is firm and crunchy with a great texture. Each little pretzel is coated in a thick layer of smooth, just sweet enough, milk chocolate. The result is a deliciously perfect gluten-free snack that will fulfill a variety of cravings.

Glutino Gluten-Free Breakfast Bars come in a variety of flavors. I sampled the Strawberry flavored ones. Each bar has a soft pastry-like outside with a moist strawberry jelly center. The outer layer is moist and thick with only a slightly grainy texture. In addition to being gluten-free they are also egg, casein, and milk free. More importantly for someone on a gluten-free diet they also have the benefit of a good amount of dietary fiber.

To learn more about these as well as any of the other great gluten-free products made by Glutino visit www.glutino.com. Be sure to stop back by to check out Mambo Sprouts Reviews Part 2-4.

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The Gluten-Free frozen burritos are one of the newest products Glutenfreeda offers. These burritos come in four flavors: Chicken & Cheese, Breakfast Beef, Vegetarian Been & Cheese, and Vegetarian & Dairy Free. All four flavors are made with natural, organic ingredient and contain no trans fat. The most appealing feature of these handy, ready to cook burritos is that a gf flour tortilla is wrapped around the filling. This makes it a unique item in the world of gluten free food.  The tortilla appears a bit mushy when it first comes out of the microwave. However, while it is cooling off it firms up resulting in an impressively tasty texture.

Glutenfreeda Real Cookies are available in five great flavors: Sugar Kookies,
Chip Chip Hooray, Chocolate Minty Python (Dark chocolate cookies w/mint), Peanut, Paul & Mary (peanut butter and chocolate chips cookies), Peanut Envy (Peanut butter cookies). Don’t let these cute names fool you; these are serious cookies sure to please any and all cookie fans.  The texture and taste of these cookies is so close to homemade it is amazing. And they are so easy to make. To enjoy fresh baked gf cookies you simply take them out of the freezer, open the package, plop a few of the pre-shaped perfectly round cookies on to a cookie sheet, and pop them into the oven. I served these as desert to the non gluten-free children of the house and got many yum, yum, yummies all around.

Have you been looking for a delicious and safe granola since you started living gf? Well search no further. Glutenfreeda delivers with three flavors of delicious granola made with certified gluten-free oats, heart healthy flax, and filled with all natural nuts, fruits, and grains. Glutenfreeda’s granola comes in three flavors: Apple Almond Honey, Raisin Almond Honey, and my absolute favorite Cranberry Cashew Honey. All 3 flavors make a great cold cereal or the perfect snack to have anytime you feel the need to crunch and munch.

If you would prefer warm oatmeal then Glutenfreeda has covered that base too. I got to try the variety pack of Glutenfreeda Instant Oatmeal, which contains two each of Apple Cinnamon, Maple Raisin, Banana Maple flavors.  If you rather have a more neutral flavor, Glutenfreeda also offers a Natural flavor perfect for topping with fresh fruit of your choosing.  Just like the granola the oats are certified gluten-free and flax has been added to boost its heart healthiness.

But don’t take my word for it, go ahead and give Glutenfreeda products a try for yourself! To learn more about Glutenfreeda and all they have to offer visit Glutenfreeda.

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Elevate Me! Energy Bars come in seven different flavors. All of the flavors contain a base of why protein isolate, date, and organic raisins. Then a variety of additional ingredients are added to make up the different flavors. The All-Fruit Original contains almonds, apples, cranberries, papaya, and mango. This was the one we thought tasted to strongly of dates. The Blueberry Cranberry Gojiberry Boost!, and Matcha Green Tea with Cranberries were my favorites because they were filled with complimentary tangy berry flavors. My significant other appreciated the addition of coca to Chocolate Acai Berry Brownie, Espresso Cocoa Crunch, and Cocoa Coconut Cluster. These tasted more like treats than a healthy protein bar. We both thought the addition of banana flavor in the Banana Nut Bread worked really with the date and raisin base.

No matter which flavor we ate the results were the same. We ended up satisfied and re-energized. The compact bar makes them a great meal on the go. In the case of my other test subject they made and easy quick snack to have when you are running out of energy are hungry and have lots of time till you can stop and have a full meal. The fact that Elevate Me! Bars are gluten free makes them a great option for training or competing celiac athletes (For more on celiac athletes visit NFCA’s Athletes for Awareness blog). However, the fact that they are also delicious makes them a yummy healthy snack for everyone.

To learn more about Elevate Me! Bars visit www.prosnack.com. Till next time, happy and healthy gluten-free snacking!

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Eco-Planet Gluten Free Hot Cereals not only taste great, they are a really healthy choice. Eco-Planet’s product is mostly whole oats with the addition of six other whole grains: buckwheat, sorghum, brown rice, puffed amaranth, quinoa and millet — that provide more nutrition, texture and taste compared to typical instant oatmeal. Did we mention that they are also USDA Certified Organic and Certified Gluten Free by the GFCO?

We sampled two flavors for our review: Apples & Cinnamon and Maple & Brown Sugar. We loved them! The mixture of different whole grains adds interest to the texture of the cereal, yet it has a nice creaminess. They are not overly sweet. Evaporated cane juice is used instead of refined sugar. This and cinnamon are very lightly applied. The mix of grains is delicious enough to not need over-sweetening.

This tasty addition to a healthy breakfast can be found at your local wegmans or online at ecoheavenllc.com where you can also find complete product information.

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Review by Emily Freedner, NFCA’s Editorial Director.

Read more reviews just like this every month, along with the latest news, and great gluten free recipes in the NFCA’s monthly newsletter. Visit the NFCA at www.celiaccentral.org and Subscribe today.

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I’m not a big fan of breakfast foods. Pancakes and waffles are the breakfast food I eat least, mostly because the heavy feeling after eating either. However, occasionally I do get hungry for a nice fluffy pancake with just the right amount of syrup. Since it is such a rare occasion not just any pancake will do, it has to be tasty. A great cure for this craving is to have a box of Maple Grove Farms Gluten Free Pancake Mix and a bottle of Maple Grove All Natural Fruit Flavored Syrup on stand by. Both products are delicious and gluten free.

The Gluten Free Pancake Mix makes nice fluffy, great flavored pancakes that are simple to make. If you are in the mood for something extra special you can make simple additions such as chocolate chips, nuts, or fresh fruit to spice up. Either way this product is a simple cure guaranteed to fix any pancake craving you have.

Maple Grove Farms makes several gluten free syrups including pure maple. But I prefer the naturally sweet taste of fruit flavored syrups. The fruit flavored syrups Maple Grove Farms are all natural and come in five great flavors, Apricot, Blueberry, Raspberry, Strawberry and Boysenberry.

To get full product details and information on how to purchase these great products visit www.maplegrove.com .Maple Grove Farms makes many gluten free and sugar free products so their site is a great place to visit even if you are not in the mood for pancakes.

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