Lucy's Cinnamon Thins

Right before I threw the box out ...

 First I'd like to ask why the cookie is called "Cinnamon Thin" when there are obviously several cookies in a box.  Shouldn't they be "Cinnamon Thins?"  For the purpose of this article, I will call them "Thins."  I really have a hard time calling a plural object by a singular name. 



There are a million brands of gluten free packaged cookies on the market these days.  Or at least, it feels like a million, doesn't it?  And so many of them are absolutely horrible.

They're too gritty, too dry, too weirdly chewy, taste like raisins, too sweet, not sweet enough, and so on.  I've had one brand absolutely wow me (Wow Baking).  A couple are fairly edible.  The rest have been disappointing and a big waste of money.

I like cinnamon, so when I saw these cookies on sale for $3.99 at Safeway, I was thrilled.  It was an opportunity to try a cookie that would normally cost at least a dollar more.  I've wasted so much money looking for a good cookie that I really really really wished that these would be good.

But they LOOK so nice, don't they?  A+ for pretty cookie.

I don't think they were awful, really.  They were just too sweet.  Really, really sweet.  I prefer a cookie to be a bit more buttery and subtle, but this was ... painfully sweet.  There wasn't enough cinnamon flavor, and there wasn't enough of any specific flavor, really.  At least they might have been really good sugar cookies if not for the sickening sweetness.

I had Lucy's chocolate chip cookies once in the past and I remember being pretty underwhelmed by them.  I would be pretty hesitant to give Lucy another shot in the future.

Each cookie is pretty diet-worthy at only 40ish calories.

Contains soy, soy, soy, soy, dairy, eggs and nuts.  (Seriously, there is a LOT of soy in there.) 

Betty Crocker Gluten Free Brownie Mix

The way I see it, there are different levels of convenience when it comes to baked goods.
1.  The pre-packaged baked good
2.  The refrigerated/frozen baked good
3.  Pre-packaged mix
4.  Making your own from scratch

The pro to pre-packaged mix is that it's convenient, but you still have a certain amount of flexibility in how you cook it.  If you don't like using butter, you can use margarine.  If you want to add chocolate chips, you can do that.  If you want to use egg replacer, that option is available to you.

There are several pre-packaged baking mixes on the market right now for gluten free customers to choose from.  Betty Crocker is, as far as I know, the only mainstream company to wade into this strange, unfamiliar territory.  The plus side to a mainstream company producing gluten free baking mix?  PRICE.  Not only is it cheaper than other mixes available, but because it's Betty Crocker it's often available in ordinary supermarkets (where other brands usually are not) and it may even be on sale!

(I bought this one on sale.  Whoo!  Sale!)

These brownies are pretty simple to make.  They only require half a stick of melted butter and two eggs.  Mix mix mix mix mix, spread into a pan or something, bake around 30 minutes, cool, eat.  Not only is that easy, it's the kind of easy you can do with kids or in your spare time.  (I like a good Tollhouse, but waiting for the butter to get soft, creaming it with x, adding y, adding z, etc. etc. is just a pain in the butt.) 

The four I didn't eat.

I don't have a traditional kitchen situation in my ... er ... house.  I have one of those electric skillets with a little wire rack in it.  I tried baking these before in the skillet and they were dry on bottom and undercooked on top.  It ... was not good.

This time I baked them in these little silicone baking cups.  I bought them ages ago (on sale in the supermarket ... impulse buy) and never used them.  It took quite a while to bake in the skillet (I had to pump it up to 400º) but they did eventually bake, and in the end I had six very large brownies.

I ate two.  One box is 2400 calories, so ... do the math there.

This is my third time using this mix.  As you can see, I liked it enough to buy it twice (it was on sale so I bought two boxes the second time).  The reason I like it is that it's a gluten free product but it tastes like a regular, glutenful brownie.  That is a big deal.  It isn't dry, it isn't bitter, it isn't gritty or grainy.  It's a chocolatey, moist, chewy brownie that tastes exactly like a brownie should.  So enjoy!  Add nuts, marshmallows, icing, whatever!  I once baked them with coconut shavings and almond slivers, just because I had them on hand.  Why not?

I paid $5.50 on sale at Don Quijote, and I've seen it on sale for a similar price at Safeway.  You probably don't live on an island, so you can probably get a better price.

The ingredients are:  Sugar, semi-sweet chocolate chips, cocoa, rice flour, potato starch, corn starch, xantham gum, and salt.  It contains soy (in the chocolate chips).  There are sixteen servings in the box (ha ha, yeah right), and each serving is 150 calories and 5g of fat (prepared).  If you like your food to have nutrition in it (I do), there's a little iron in the mix and it ends up with some vit A and protein when you're all done.

Other varieties available are white cake, chocolate cake, and chocolate chip cookies.