Cherrybrook Kitchen Cookie Mix

One day, I found myself in my local Whole Foods, trying like hell to use the natural food coupons I had scored from Mambo Sprouts before they expired.

One was for a Cherrybrook Kitchens product of my choice, so I decided to give it a go: cookie, cake and frosting mixes were available, and they are designed with the food-allergic in mind (think wheat gluten, peanuts, dairy). I opted for the chocolate chip cookie mix.

Fast forward to Valentine’s Day. I needed a dessert for the special dinner I was cooking my sweetie. Cherrybrook Kitchens’ chocolate chip cookie mix to the rescue!

All I needed to add to the dry mix (which contained wheat ingredients, but featured non-dairy chocolate and evaporated cane juice was a little water and softened butter or margarine (or a non-dairy, vegan alternative, but I went with what was on hand), then mix (they pictured a spoon, but trust me when I tell you to break out the hand mixer unless you have guns like Hulk Hogan), drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet, et voila!

Beautiful, homemade-looking chocolate chip cookies. Sweetie and I made our own Chipwich-style ice cream sandwiches, and the cookies stayed firm and unsoggy (and delicious). The mix even made more than the 20 cookies promised (probably more like 25-28, although they were all eaten by the next evening).

Would I have bought the mix without the coupon? Probably not, although it was certainly cheaper full-price at Whole Foods than the $5.29 it retails for on the website, where you can also order the mixes if you don’t have a natural food store in your area. However, for people with food allergies, such as celiac disease, or parents of kids with peanut or dairy allergies (whose numbers seem to be growing every day), this is a great product, and a convenient one for those times when you just can’t motivate yourself to bake from scratch, but don’t want to poison yourself with Betty Crocker’s hydrogenated palm kernel oil madness.