enjoy life foods

Product Review: Enjoy Life Foods Soft Baked Cookies

1 Comment

Enjoy Life Foods contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I would be interested in doing a product review for them.  I have always enjoyed the various products of theirs that I have tired so I said yes and a few days later I received 3 boxes of their Soft Baked Cookies which are described as “Soft, chewy and totally yummy, it’s hard to believe our cookies are gluten-free and allergy-friendly. Made with natural ingredients, unrefined sweeteners, no trans fats and nothing artificial, they’re a real hit among kids big and small.”

The first of the cookies that the Hubz and I tried were the Snickerdoodle; an all time favorite cookie of the Hubz.  Well my first impression was that the cookie looked good and had a great cinnamon flavor but it was just too sugary for me.  I honestly have not gone back for one of these after my initial trial of them. These were my least favorite of all of them and I would say the Hubz least favorite too.

The Double Chocolate Brownie were a huge improvement over the Snickerdoodles.  They actually tasted just like chocolate chip brownies and were soft and yummy.  I loved the addition of the chocolate chips it was great.

The Lively Lemon were my favorite and reminded me of my Girl Scout days.  They tasted just like those lemon sandwich cookies that I used to hate as a child but grew to love as I got older.  I have to say these ones are yummy for adults but I would say just like the lemon sandwiches would probably not be as popular among the kiddlets.

Overall I really liked these cookies and I appreciate they are lower in sugar, fat and calories per serving than most vegan cookies.  They are also nut and gluten free so they are perfect for people with allergies to these items. So two out of three were tasty but of course there a bunch of other flavors that such as the gingerbread and “no oats” oatmeal that I’d like to try out.

Disclaimer: Enjoy Life Foods provided me with a free sample of their soft baked cookies for a product to review. I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose; nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway.

A Difficult Mistake To Make Again

2 Comments

Yesterday morning I had my heart set on making this recipe .  I had all the ingredients for the mole sauce and prepared it in the morning so I would only have to worry about making the tamales when I arrived home after work.  Well I spent the rest of the day thinking about the fact that I wasn’t in love with the mole sauce and also how it seemed silly to try to make something when corn isn’t in season and frozen corn for the tamales just didn’t seem like it would be as good. So, I scrapped it which put me in another dilemma- How can I use this sauce?

I decided to make enchiladas and I picked up the fixings for them which was the easy part.  Now to the hard part making this raw mole sauce into a mole enchilada sauce that tasted good.  I started by heating the mole sauce with vegetable broth to thin it out, however this did not improve the taste- it just was like spicy, nutty, chocolate soup.  Then I got the idea to add more chili powder, cumin, salt, pepper, ume plum vinegar, tomato sauce and a number of other things I can’t remember until it tasted good.

I made a filling of refried beans, mushrooms and spinach which I then rolled up and placed in a baking dish.  I topped with the mole enchilada sauce and a dusting of nutritional yeast and placed in the oven to bake for 20 minutes uncovered.  Once it came out of the oven I topped with a drizzle of smoky paprika cheeze sauce (based off this recipe) and a little avocado.

Well they look good right? Now the test was to see if they actually tasted as good as they look. The verdict: they were really amazing, however due to all the playing around to make the sauce taste good it is going to be difficult to recreate this dish that turned out amazing by mistake. Oh well, I think I have enough knowledge on how to recreate it and I hope to try it again- but this time I will write everything down so you can try it too!

For dessert we tried one of the sample cookies sent to me from Enjoy Life Foods; they sent the Snickerdoodle, Double Chocolate Brownie and Lively Lemon to test out for them. Last night we tried the Snickerdoodle, overall the Hubz and I thought that they were okay. They were nice and soft but we both felt that they were super sugary tasting and the texture was almost like eating brown sugar (we just aren’t sugar lovers).  I am hoping that the other two flavors are better.