Tag Archive for 'Recipe'

Product Review: Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Brownie Mix

Chocolate! That’s what we’re talking about here. We’ve been making the Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Brownie Mix for almost a year now and recently it came to my attention that we haven’t ever reviewed it on this site. This mix is really awesome. We don’t make it exactly how the package says you should, though, so I’m going to provide details about what we do.

Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Brownie Mix

The brownie mix is free of wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, soy, and corn, which is cool because that takes care of quite a few common allergy foods. Of course, it has chocolate, but that’s the point! Here is a list of ingredients: Organic Evaporated Cane Juice (sugar), Sweet Brown Rice Flour, Cocoa (processed with alkali), Tapioca Flour, Arrowroot Flour, Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum. I always list the amount of sodium in the Trader Joe’s products I review (check here to see a list of our reviewed Trader Joe’s Gluten Free products). The package says that it makes 12 servings. Each serving has 125 mg of salt.

Trader Joes Gluten-free Brownie Mix

The recipe on the package calls for 1 egg, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and 1/4 cup water.

Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

We always put some of these awesome chips in our brownies. They’re the Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. Besides being delicious, they’re free of dairy, nuts, gluten, and soy, and are mini-chips. This makes them ideal for brownies.
As an egg substitute, you can add your own favorite (when we replace eggs, we use the Ener-G Food Egg Replacer because it is gluten-free.) We also replace half of the oil with some applesauce. This sounds kind of weird, considering you’re making brownies, but I think it really improves the brownies, and also the brownies are a lot more healthy. In case you’re wondering, it is possible to replace all the oil with applesauce and end up with edible brownies, but they definitely aren’t as delicious, and don’t seem to keep as well.

Ready to go!

One of the most important things about making brownies is to not overcook them. When you overcook brownies they end up rock hard when they’ve cooled off. It seems like the Trader Joe’s mix doesn’t suffer from this so much, which is cool. With a little bit of adjustment, this mix can also be used to make cookies. Instructions for these are on the package.

Finished Brownie

And here’s the reward. We have made these brownies and shared them with friends and family, and nobody has ever suspected that they are gluten-free. They’re awesome!

We want to know: Are there other gluten-free brownie mixes out there? Do you have any tricks or tips to make better brownies? Let us know in the comments.

Times we have visited: 8+ (so we feel confident about our score.)
Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: About the same

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Published on December 14, 2009 in Product Review. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Bread Machine Jam!

OK OK I’m a little late with this feature. We’ve been super-busy. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to slow down a little bit during the next two months. I keep meaning to put together this feature and here goes. We made jam with our bread machine. To be more specific, we used some plums from a tree in our back yard to make jam. We made it without a lot of sugar, too. If you get the right kind of pectin, you don’t have to add a ton of sugar to get your jam to thicken up.

Plums Ready to Go!

Plums Ready to Go!

Everything Else You Need

Everything Else You Need

Here’s what you need: Some fruit, sugar, lemon juice, pectin, and water. And a breadmaker. The pectin we use is Pomona’s Universal Pectin. As mentioned above, this is a special pectin which lets you cut down the sugar in the recipe. It uses calcium to activate it. We did it with plums, but you can use about anything. For jams, you can use kiwi, strawberry, raspberry, gooseberry, blackberry, currant, cherry, plum, pineapple, mulberry, blueberry, pear, mango, peach, apricot, fig, or citrus fruit (for marmalades). For jelly, you could use apples, quince, blackberries, pomegranate, raspberry, currants, grapes, or peppers. We used our Zojirushi bread machine, but most other bread machines also have the ability to make jam. You can get the pectin on Amazon, but we got ours at Whole Foods.

Here’s our recipe:

Low Sugar Plum Jam – Bread Machine

  • 2 cup cubed, mashed plums (about 16 small plums)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 1/2 tsp pectin powder
  • 2 tsp calcium water

(The calcium water is some regular tap water with calcium powder that comes with the Pomona’s pectin. You make that beforehand.)

  1. Cut up plums in 1/8ths and microwave for a few minutes to soften. Mash plums briefly.
  2. Add lemon juice and calcium water to plums.
  3. Add pectin to sugar.
  4. Put all ingredients in bread machine, set on Jam Setting, and press start.
Plums and Ingredients in the Bread Machine

Plums and Ingredients in the Bread Machine

Program up the Bread Machine

Program up the Bread Machine

It's Jam!

It's Jam!

Spread that Jam on some Gluten Free Bread

Spread that Jam on some Gluten Free Bread

  • Resulting Batch – 2 1/2 c
  • Prep Time – 20 min
  • Cooking Time – 1 1/4 hrs
  • Total Time – 1 hr 35 min
  • Difficulty – Semi Easy

Here is a helpful card with recipes and instructions that you can download from Pomona’s website (it’s a PDF).

How is the jam, you ask? The jam is AMAZING! Also, Sienna went through the trouble to put the jam in canning jars. She had a lot of fun.

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Published on November 17, 2009 in Recipes. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

What’s for Dinner? Barbecued Chicken Thighs!

I have a confession to make. As a guy, I feel like there are certain things that come with the Y chromosome. Like, for instance, I don’t like to ask for directions when I’m obviously lost. Like many men I have to be beaten over the head with most things before I will notice them. Also, I think that there is certain knowledge that comes with having a Y chromosome. For instance, being able to fix a bicycle without instructions or how to grill anything. ANYTHING! Unfortunately, I learned recently that I am not exactly a barbecue expert, and as usual I found this out courtesy of Sunset Magazine.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free BBQ Sauce

Yes. Yes. I am saying that in the past I burned a lot of food on the grill, and for no good reason. Now let’s just put this behind us and get on to how to make these awesome chicken thighs the right way. First off, you’ll need some BBQ sauce. For this recipe I used the Trader Joe’s barbecue sauce which I reviewed here.

I’m sure there are other gluten-free barbecue sauces in the world. The problem is that a lot of BBQ sauces have smoke flavor as an ingredient and that’s an item that may or may not be gluten-free. So you should check with the manufacturer to see before assuming that they’re safe.

1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs (or skinned & boned if you prefer)
8 tablespoons gluten-free barbecue sauce

That was simple. Now take your chicken and put it in a bowl with 6 tablespoons of the Trader Joe’s BBQ sauce. Mix them up and let the mixture “rest” for at least twenty minutes. Even better, put it in the fridge for a couple of hours. (If you’re using chicken thighs with the skins on, you’ll want to use a turkey baster to “inject” the sauce under the skins. If you don’t have a baster, the next best thing is to peel some of the skin back by hand and use a basting brush to brush some sauce in there.) Some people will tell you to rub the chicken with oil first but I don’t do that.

Now get some charcoal going. What you’ll want to do is pile the charcoal over on one end of your grill. Let the briquettes get properly hot but don’t let them go too far because we’re in for the long haul. First, put the thighs directly over the coals to sear them. Depending on how hot your coals are and how high the grill surface is, you’ll probably only want to leave them on for maybe 30 seconds. We just want to sear them so they have the nice grill marks on them. I’ll usually check one or two as they go and then flip them all when one is done. Grill both sides.

(As a side note, I don’t know if this is true exactly for chicken pieces, but for burgers you only want to flip them once on a grill. The reason is that you lose more of the juices every time you flip them. I tend to think the same is probably true with chicken so I try not to flip them too much. The problem with this is that if you leave them too long they’ll burn and that’s worse!)

Now once you have your thighs seared, move them over to the other side of the grill and close the lid. Give them at least 20 minutes over there, checking them every few minutes to make sure they aren’t burning. Since they’re far away from the coals they shouldn’t burn but it’s still good to check. If you have a meat thermometer, you’ll want to keep grilling them until the interior temperature of the thighs is 165 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t have a meat thermometer, you can check for doneness by selecting the thickest chunk of chicken and cutting it open. If it’s still pink in the middle you’ll need to cook them more.

Depending on the heat of the grill and the size of the chicken parts, you may need to grill them another 20 to 40 minutes. At two points during the grilling process, you’ll want to brush on the other two tablespoons of your Trader Joe’s gluten-free barbecue sauce.

One thing that’s nice about this way of cooking the thighs is that you can grill your veggies over the coals because the chicken is off to the side. Shown in the picture is squash from our garden, grilled with mushrooms and red bell pepper. To keep veggies from turning to cinders on a grill you use lots of olive oil and salt. For three cups of veggies I use 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1/8 teaspoon of salt. I don’t know how it works but it does. The veggies turn out awesome, too!

This review was done to be part of What’s for Dinner? Wednesday, hosted by Linda at Gluten-free Homemaker.

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Published on July 22, 2009 in Recipes. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .