Review: Pamela's Products

I am pleased to present the first in my series of Food Fete related reviews: Pamela's Products.  I sampled a ton of cookies, and a cake and frosting mix, and even though I am not under any dietary restrictions that require me to eat gluten-free foods, I give Pamela and her Products two thumbs up!

zee cake, made by me. and friends. and a monkey.

Pamela's Products makes gluten free treats, from cookies to cheesecake, and boy are they good.  The white chocolate cheesecake is so good I have been bugging my local Whole Foods to stock it.  They don't.  Yet.  But you can get all kinds of other products by Pamela there...for a full list of where to get her treats, click here.  Seriously, good stuff.  And I can vouch for Pamela - she's very nice!

Now, I would have taken pictures of all the cookies we tried.  I am, however, impatient when it comes to cookies (and so are my friends), and somehow all the cookies were gone by the time I remembered my camera.  Oops.  I guess we liked them.

We tried: Chunky Chocolate Chip, Organic Dark Chocolate - Chocolate Chunk, Organic Spicy Ginger with Crystallized Ginger, Ginger Mini Snapz, and Extreme Chocolate Mini Cookies.  I have to say, while I am normally an All Chocolate All The Time kinda gal, I think I preferred the ginger!  The Mini Snapz were perfectly crunchy little bites, and the big ones were soft and chewy; they had a nice spicy kick to them, and lovely little bits of crystallized ginger mixed in.  I really dug those ginger cookies.  When it comes to the chocolate chip, I think I just always prefer homemade, but I also really liked the chocolate mini cookies. Perfect with a mini glass of milk or just for a smaller sugar appetite.  But yeah.  Loved those ginger cookies.  We brought the cookies along on a trip to Tahoe, and as I mentioned, they were quickly devoured.

I remembered my camera for the cake making extravaganza - thank goodness, because the little monkey who helped us bake it had a really great time.  Check out our little (10-photo, mostly of Monkey) slideshow for pics!


This cake was seriously good.  Somehow both dense and fluffy, and with a really delightful taste. I can see how the batter is versatile too; it would be great with various extracts and zests (lemon? orange? mmmm), and it would be great for cupcakes.  Honestly, if you hadn't told me it was gluten free, I wouldn't have known.  Delish. 

And the icing?  I definitely used a spatula to scrape remnants out of the Cuisinart (yes, we made it - super easily - in the food processor! Love this thing!) and licked as much as I could.  I was worried there wouldn't be enough, but there was plenty to cover the entire cake, and fill in between the layers, and allow for lots of spoon/spatula-licking as well.  Mmmm!

In case you're wondering, it was the Classic Vanilla Cake Mix and the Dark Chocolate Frosting Mix.   The frosting seemed more like regular than dark chocolate, but I think you can tell that we liked it.  I have always been a red-box-mix and frosting-in-a-can kinda girl, but I think from now on, I'm going to stick to Pamela's!  This was seriously easy to make, and void of scary chemicals.  I approve!

My only complaint is that it didn't hold up as well the second day (after a night in the fridge) as its chemical preservative-laden counterparts (I love you, Betty and Duncan).  But if you're going to eat it all on the first day?  Totally awesome.  Spongey and light and delicious.  Any tips on helping gluten-free cake stay good for another day or two?  I normally do the toothpick-in-the-top, aluminum-foil-over-it-all method, but like I said, that didn't work as well this time.  Note: we still ate it.  Topped it with a little raspberry ice cream and we were good to go.   :)

Thanks, Pamela (and all the lovely people who help with your Products)! I can't wait to try the Baking & Pancake Mix and the Chocolate Brownie Mix you sent!