Enjoy Life Soft Baked Lively Lemon Cookies

Enjoy Life Soft Baked Lively Lemon Cookies
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

One of the most significant types of food that people who cannot eat wheat or gluten tend to miss is the glorious cookie. From giant chocolate chip cookies that are the size of a Frisbee to soft baked sugar cookies, there are just an endless supply of delicious treats that like to sit on store shelves and taunt anyone with an allergy. 

And this is why many dessert and candy manufacturers have been searching for the perfect cookie recipe. But most companies have had little true success with creating a cookie that actually tastes like it has the right consistency.

And that is one of the biggest things about cookies that are gluten free. Usually the question is: are they smooth and sugary or cake-like and gritty?

For Enjoy Life Soft Baked Lively Lemon Cookies, the answer is something in the middle as they do have a nice consistency yet it's still possible to tell that it's a gluten free type of cookie. But this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker as people who must eat things that don't have the magical "glue" of gluten are used to their food falling apart before it even comes out of the package.

Enjoy Life Soft Baked Lively Lemon Cookies
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

But these cookies definitely stay together and upon opening the box, you'll likely see twelve completely intact cookies. But they are twelve very tiny cookies as they are not much bigger than a half dollar. If you don't pay attention to what you're eating, you can down this entire box in a matter of seconds. And for anyone who doesn't otherwise possess the metabolism of a marathon runner, this would mean a whopping 600 calories! That's more calories than a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese! It's hard to believe, but just a single cookie is actually fifty calories and has 3.5 grams of fat. 

This is definitely a food you need to eat in moderation unless you happen to be running a marathon the next day.

Enjoy Life Soft Baked Lively Lemon Cookies - Tiny Cookies
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

One of the nice things about these cookies is that they're not only gluten free, but they're also nut free as well and this is a plus for anyone seeking dessert food who is also allergic to nuts. Many dessert foods that are in the cookie category are either filled with nuts or are produced in a facility that processes nuts. 

Fortunately for people with gluten allergies or nut allergies, the Enjoy Life bakeries are stated to be free of either substance.

The consistency of the cookies is nice though and for the lemon variety (the company makes several flavors), the aroma of lemon will definitely fill the general vicinity when you open the box. Some other nice things about these cookies include the fact that they are completely free of artificial flavors, although it's interesting to note that they're not organic (so many gluten free and "natural" foods are also organic).

Biting into one of these cookies is a nice experience, even if the cookie's size is not exactly significant.

Enjoy Life Soft Baked Lively Lemon Cookies
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

Enjoy Life Soft Baked Lively Lemon Cookies Report Card

The Good Things:

The lemon aroma of these cookies is great and the "soft baked" angle is a tasty way to present the cookie. If you like lemons and you like cookies, these cookies provide a decent cookie experience. You won't fall out of your chair in bliss, but you'll get your cookie fix.

What Could Be Improved:

It's likely that the bakery responsible for these cookies was concentrating on taste and consistency more than making a cookie that could be eaten without worry about things like fat and calories. The cookies are pretty small and could be flattened out a small amount to make their real estate seem a little more significant.

Schär Multigrain Bread

Schär Multigrain Bread
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

One of the most popular offerings for gluten free products is regular run-of-the-mill bread and there are all sorts out there like white bread, flax bread, and multi-grain bread. And the sad truth is that most of these breads are going to taste like cardboard. The majority of the population will probably feel as though they're eating a saltine cracker instead of biting into a chewy piece of delicious bread. And the primary reason for this particular issue is the fact that the "glue" is simply missing from the package.

Gluten simply holds the whole package together and without some wheat in that mixture, bread is often going to be crumbly and without real strength.

And this is why most gluten-free breads are always going to require special care when they are used for just about any meal whether they are tossed in a pan for grilled cheese sandwiches or they're put into a toaster. Just staring at gluten-free bread is often enough to cause it all to spontaneously disintegrate into a million little pieces of gluten-free pebbles. Which might be fine if you like your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on pieces of bread that are an inch square.

Schär Multigrain Bread
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

And Schär Multigrain Bread is definitely a bread that requires some carefully handling or it is likely to come out looking like bread crumbs that you might want to stuff inside a turkey instead of using for anything more rigid, toasted or cooked. And as you can see from the picture above, you don't actually have a lot to work with when you buy a loaf. 

Schär Multigrain Bread
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

Not only is the length of the loaf much shorter than what you might find from your local, standard loaf of white bread, but the pieces themselves are quite small in size. This means that anyone who is over the age of twelve will find the cute smallness of the pieces of bread should require the use of at least four pieces of bread for a few sandwiches unless there's a huge bag of potato chips standing by to help with the lack of bread real estate.

And eating four pieces of bread shouldn't have too much of an impact on anyone who is calorie counting as each slice only has seventy calories in it. Anyone looking to reduce their overall consumption of fat should note that there is a gram of fat per piece so with four pieces of bread, that's grams of fat added to whatever toppings might be included in the meal such as cheese on a grilled cheese or perhaps butter on a simple piece of toast. 

Overall, one gram of fat per slice isn't a lot of fat, but it's interesting that these pygmy-sized pieces have the same amount of fat that's generally found in a regular sized piece of bread.

Schär Multigrain Bread - Pieces Break Easily!
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

For the purposes of this review, I decided to make grilled cheese as it was a project that would require more than just slapping some peanut butter on the loaf and calling it a day. 

But when I took the bread out of the hermetically sealed package, there were already signs of breakage on the slices despite my generally careful handling of such items. I know that bread in particular has a tendency to break apart rather easily but that didn't stop the Schär slices from being crumbly right out of the bag. It's not as if I'd played fetch with the family cat before opening the bag.


My strategy to cook proper grilled cheeses despite the breakage would be to use the cheese as a type of glue. This strategy was successful for the most part and the bread behaved itself for the majority of its time in the pan until it was browned up and the cheese was melted.

Schär Multigrain Bread - Cheese is Glue!
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

This meant I had to be particularly careful with how I flipped the sandwiches once the cheese was added and the pieces were clamped together. The annoying thing about this issue was that the pieces were already crumbly right out of the bag, so it's not as if I could have simply been very careful during the actual cooking process. 


Breakable pieces are just another one of those little elements of gluten-free cooking that is likely to impact just about any sort of sandwich bread.

As far as the taste of the finished product, assuming a very heavy amount of additional ingredients are used such as the cheese and butter in the case of a grilled cheese sandwich, the taste of a Schär Multigrain Bread sandwich will probably remind you of a very slightly sourdough type of bread although that's clearly not the type of bread that Schär is trying to make with this bread option. But this aspect isn't a deal-killer unless you have an absolute hatred of sourdough.


Overall, the end result for using this Schär product in a grilled cheese is a positive one for giving you the sort of sensory satisfaction that a grilled cheese can offer, but it's a bit of a hassle to pull off a non-broken and intact sandwich. Also, the taste is going to be just a little off as far as how it compares to true bread. But that's not entirely unexpected.

Schär Multigrain Bread - Grilled Cheese Form
Photograph Copyright 2012 by Kelsey Wyatt

Schär Multigrain Bread Report Card


The Good Things:


As long as you're creative with how you handle this bread and you don't mind the mild taste of sourdough, this particular Schär product can definitely be turned into something resembling a normal meal. Just remember to load it up with toppings.


What Could Be Improved:


The fragile nature of the bread is something that can be dealt with, but the Schär folks really could benefit from some experimentation in how to make their bread a little more solid. The recipe could also benefit from some tweaking so the sourdough taste wasn't so evident.

Schär Multigrain Bread Getting Cheesed
Photograph Copyright 2012 by Kelsey Wyatt

Getting a Great Meal from Schär Multigrain Bread:


There's nothing wrong with loading up these slices of bread with tons of butter and cheese. After all, the best way to enjoy a grilled cheese is to go overboard with the ingredients.


But remember to be absolutely careful with the bread as it is cooking otherwise the end result will be crumbly pieces of bread fit for nobody but the ducks at the local pond.


On a final note, the best option for this bread and its taste is always going to be in toasted form. Eating it straight out of the bag is definitely not recommended.

KIND Protein Bars - Gluten and Wheat Free

KIND Plus Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein Bar
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

There are often several shelves of energy bars and protein bars in the average grocery store and it doesn't matter whether you're looking at a store shelf in an organic paradise or just a regular grocery store - most of those bars are going to be filled to the brim with all sorts of evil contents like wheat, oats and gluten. In fact, one of the interesting things about such bars is that they're often called "protein" bars, but the first several ingredients aren't anything that resemble protein.

But this doesn't mean that all the protein and energy bars out there are full of wheat and several proclaim to be free of gluten. Now, the problem with most protein bars is that they're usually a bit on the dry side. The more ingredients that are banned from the bars for allergy reasons, the more protein bars tend to taste like sawdust. And then the problem with the bars that don't taste like sawdust is the fact that they're basically just a candy bar and if your allergies permit it, it's often a better idea to just go pick up a Snickers bar.

KIND Plus Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein Bar
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

A recent addition to the wide array of protein and energy bars on the market are a series called KIND Plus bars which are produced by a company hailing from New York. The company makes a number of different styles of bars with varying ingredients such as fruit, nuts and various types of sweets. And that's definitely one of the selling points of these bars. They taste like candy bars. 

And they're not always low on fat so if you find a particular bar that strikes your fancy, make sure you don't toss back three or four at a sitting.

If your tastes run to chocolate, it's definitely recommended that you try the KIND Plus Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate + Protein bar as there are a lot of great nuts in it and it's got a heavy dose of chocolate as well. But be warned, the small 120 calorie item does have 13 grams of fat. For the average active adult, this is a full 20% of your daily fat allowance.

KIND Plus Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein Bar
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

The one redeeming thing about the fat content is that it's likely a significant portion of it comes from the nuts that are included in the bar. The ingredient list on the Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate variety reads like a can of mixed nuts:

• Peanuts
• Almonds
• Walnuts
• Macadamias
• Cashews
• Brazil Nuts

Another great aspect of these bars is the fact that the manufacturer prints that they are non-GMO, which is not something that every protein and energy bar company strives to provide with their products. As an added bonus, certain varieties of KIND bars are also low in sugar and some do have a nice amount of fiber in them as well.

KIND Plus Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein Bar
Photograph Copyright 2012 Kelsey Wyatt

KIND Protein Bars Report Card

The Good Things:

KIND makes a large variety of different bars and there is likely to be one that suits anyone's tastes. It is this author's suggestion that everyone should try the Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate variety. 

The company also promises non-GMO ingredients and one of the bonuses is that they offer varieties that are not only gluten free, but are also wheat free as well. This is something that some companies overlook when producing gluten free products.

What Could Be Improved:

It's not really an improvement that the company could make since nuts (which are a consistent and significant ingredient in most bars) do have a lot of fat in them, but if you find a bar from KIND that you like, it's vital that they're not treated like snack size candy bars! Go easy on these delicious bars!

Tips for a Better Protein Bar Experience:

Consider eating one of these bars before going out on a run or before a workout. The high protein content granted from the nuts is a great way to get some instant energy for a hard workout.

To learn more about KIND PLUS bars and all of the varieties of protein bars that the company offers, click here.