Better Batter Gluten Free Flour Review and Giveaway

I am so excited about this! Back in December I received a complimentary sample of Better Batter Gluten Free Flour to review on my blog. It arrived on Christmas Eve, just in time to make cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning! I made the Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll Clone recipe that I found on the Better Batter Website. As I was rolling out the dough for the cinnamon rolls, I had to stop and just enjoy rolling the “real” dough between my fingers. I never thought I would ever experience that feeling again after my celiac diagnosis 5 years ago.

When the boys came down to see what “Santa” had brought the most amazing thing happened. They could smell the cinnamon aroma coming from the kitchen and they pitter-pattered right past all the loot and asked me what I was making. As I pulled the tray of hot gooey cinnamon rolls out of the oven, their eyes grew about an inch. We took a pause from the impending chaos of opening presents and just sat at the kitchen table and enjoyed our fluffy pillows of warm cinnamon goodness. The only sound that could be heard was of little lips smacking with delight. Our gluten-free life is now complete, there is nothing that we cannot have if we want it bad enough (Better Batter even has a recipe for GF Filo (or phyllo) Dough and GF Pizza Rolls… like the Totino’s Pizza Rolls!). This is a very powerful thing for me (and hopefully for Sam) because knowing we can have something if we want it, makes sticking to a permanent dietary regimen a lot easier to accept and embrace. I don’t know about you, but for me, if I know I cannot have something… it just makes me want it all the more (even if it is something I didn’t normally eat pre-gluten free, like Twinkies!). We were so into the cinnamon rolls that I forgot to take a picture!

I have also made the Cinnabon Clone Cinnamon Rolls (click here for the vegan version of the recipe), and I do have a picture to show you:

I was so impressed with Better Batter’s Gluten Free Flour, that I ordered a 25 lb. bag of flour before I was even finished with my sample package! That 25 lbs. is now gone too… it “left the building” a week after I got it! Mike just ordered me another 25 lbs. today! 🙂

I also made Pigs in a Blanket using Better Batter’s Super Versatile Bread Dough recipe.

This is where most of my 25 lbs. of Better Batter Flour went! My husband can eat his entire body weight's worth in one sitting and Mike is not a big eater (he is 6'5" and 180 lbs., he is a pretty thin guy!). I have a ton of these in my deep freezer, ready to pull out when needed!

Then there was the Better Batter Flour Tortillas! Oh my gosh, these are the best! I wholeheartedly believe they taste better that the store-bought glutinous flour tortillas. Not a doubt in my mind. They are super easy to make and by making your own, you can easily sub out the lard or fully and partially hydrogenated oil that is in Crisco. I used Spectrum Shortening which is non-hydrogenated.

Real Chicken Soft Tacos have re-entered our gluten-free meal time! WOO-HOO!

We have also made GF Breakfast Burritos, Huevos Rancheros and Burritos! Yum.

The dinner rolls I made came from a recipe I found on Recipezaar, I wanted to try out the Better Batter Gluten-Free Flour in other recipes to see if it worked just as well. So far, so good!

Check out the Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies I made yesterday:

And the Gluten-Free “Nutter Butter” Cookies:

I think they taste just like Nabisco's, even if they don't look the same! 😀

And this has been this biggest seller of all to me: Gluten-Free Puff Pastry! Yes, you heard me right, GF Puff Pastry…

Now, please keep in mind that I have never made Puff Pastry in my life, gluten-free or otherwise! Another thing to keep in mind is that this was not well thought out by me in advance. I am quite often driven by impulse, a sidekick companion to my ADD. There are positive sides to this trait of mine and some not-so positive sides. One positive? I can watch the movie Julie and Julia (GREAT movie by the way!!) on a Sunday night and wake up on Monday morning ready to tackle GF Puff Pastry, having not taken the time to think it through and risk talking myself out of it! The downside? I can get so involved in a project like this that I completely miss an appointment! I am currently working on some tactics to overcome this issue of mine and I think I will start by taking some wardrobe advice from Flava Flav (I might even do the hat!). Just call me Flava GF Mom! 😀 :

See what I mean? ADD tangent! Back to the GF Puff Pastry…

I watched an online video of Michele Richard and Julia Child making the gluten version of puff pastry and followed another blogger’s (Irina at Pastry Pal) tutorial for making glutenous puff pastry. Okay, so as I am sitting here writing this post, and copying links from the Pastry Pal’s blog to show you where I got my inspiration, I just happened to go to Irina’s home page and guess what I found? A recipe for Nanimo Bars that are gluten-free! The Nanimo Bars recipe was part of a 2010 Daring Baker’s Challenge hosted by Lauren of The Celiac Teen! Apparently, Irina has a wheat sensitivity and is going to be making more gluten-free recipes! That is either total dumb luck on my part or we really do live in a small world!

This is my first attempt at Gluten-Free Puff Pastry using Better Batter Gluten-Free Flour

For comparison purposes, here is Irina’s gluten puff pastry from the Pastry Pal Website:

This is Wheat Based Homemade Puff Pastry that Irina of PastryPal.com made.

My Gluten-Free Puff Pastry is not quite as “poofy,” as the wheat based puff pastry but I am not willing to chalk that up to it not having any gluten, not yet anyway. Right now I would say the “poof-lite” outcome is due to operator error. I am going to keep practicing to see if I can’t make the GF puff pastry equally as puffy as the gluten version. Outside of the puffy factor, the taste was AMAZING! I used it last night to make Chicken Pot Pies (using a Rachael Ray Recipe), check it out:

I made a bunch of these and put them in individual foil pie plates and froze them! Homemade Gluten-Free “Fast Food!”

One last example. I really miss Shrimp Gumbo. Pappadeaux’s Shrimp Gumbo to be specific. I cannot find a “copycat” recipe anywhere to do a “GF recycling.” I know it has a really dark base but every time I have tried to make a dark roux using different GF flour blends, it always comes out a light beige, at best. I found a recipe for Dark Roux on the Better Batter website:

Better Batter Gluten Free Dark Roux

Not quite as dark as Pappadeaux's, but much more visually appealing than a white gumbo! It was yummy! 😀

I also use Better Batter GF Flour in my Gluten-Free Magic Mix, which I use in my gluten-free condensed soup recipes.

But don’t just take my word for it, check out Kim Bouldin’s Review of Better Batter Gluten Free Flour on her blog, “Gluten-Free Is Life.”

I will eventually get all of these recipes posted but until then, you have a chance to win a free sampling of Better Batter’s products!

Better Batter Complete Product Sampler Giveaway

The winner of this contest/giveaway will receive a fabulous prize package consisting of: (1) 2.5 lb. package of Better Batter Gluten Free Flour, (1) 2.5 Lb. package of Better Batter Gluten-Free Pancake and Biscuit Mix, and (2) 20 oz. packages of Better Batter Gluten-Free Fudge Brownie Mix!! A prize package worth $24.25!! Woo-Hoo!

To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment to this post about which Better Batter recipe you would want to try first should you win. Click here to look through Better Batter’s recipe archive.

In addition to leaving a comment, you need to do one of the following things:

• Sign up to follow @BetterBatter on Twitter and “tweet” about this contest, including a link to this post. Please include @adventuresgfmom in your tweet so I have a record.

OR

• Become a fan of Better Batter on Facebook.

If you are a blogger:

You will need to mention this contest in a blog post (thank you!) and include a link to this post in order to enter.

I will use a Random Number Generator to pick the winner on Friday, February, 5, 2010.

Good luck! 🙂