Gluten Free Give and Take

Mainstream food companies both giveth and taketh away gluten-free products.

General Mills has announced that it will no longer be making a gluten-free claim on three varieties of its Hamburger Helper type meals.

Ironically for a company that has made a big splash with it's attention to gluten- free products, the announcement comes in the middle of Celiac Disease Awareness month.

Frito Lay, on the other hand, saw celiac awareness month as the perfect time to announce that the company will begin labeling its some of its chips "gluten free." The snacks have long been made with gluten-free ingredients, but the addition of the label will make it easier for gluten-free consumers to identify them. 

Even more important the gluten-free claim will be backed up with testing to  20 parts per million, the standard the Food and Drug Administration has proposed for gluten-free labeling. Lay’s Classic potato chips, Fritos Original corn chips, Tostitos Scoops! tortilla chips and Baked! Lay’s Original potato crisps will soon roll out with a gluten-free label.  A full list of products that the company is already testing to 20 ppm is on the Frito Lay website.

Meanwhile, General Mills said it's Cheesy Hashbrown, Asian Chicken Fried Rice and Asian  Beef Fried Rice Helper meals will no longer be made in a dedicated gluten-free facility. Although the ingredients will not change, the company says the meal mixes could be cross-contaminated with gluten.

To add insult to injury, the helper meals will now have a warning statement that they "May contain wheat."

Gluten-free versions of the meals may still be on store shelves - so stock up while you can. But be careful. Newer product not considered gluten-free could soon be on the shelf right next to the older boxes.

General Mills, which touts it's gluten-free commitment through a website devoted to gluten-free recipes and products, says this move is not a sign of reduced interest in gluten-free consumers. The company still has 300 products labeled gluten free.

But to me commitment means making choices that preserve the gluten-free nature of a product. How difficult  would it have been to keep making the helper meals in  dedicated plant? I suspect it's often easier to make a product in a way that does not put gluten free as a first priority. But doesn't commitment mean you do it even when it's harder?

I don't want to be overly harsh with General Mills. It was quick to get the word out about the change in production. And even without the helper meals General Mills remains a leader among mainstream companies making gluten-free foods. Their Chex brand cereals set an industry standard for how to easily and affordably convert an existing product to gluten free. The cereals are a staple in our house and I would be much more upset if Chex was the product getting its gluten-free label yanked.

It could be that the meals just weren't selling well, although the company did not make any mention of decreased sales in the announcement.
Instead, the company emphasized that its dedication to gluten-free goes all the way to the top, meaning the chief operating officer's wife, who has celiac disease.

If you have been following the gluten-free diet long enough, you know its not uncommon for a product that was gluten free to suddenly change or disappear entirely. Sometimes it's a change in how the product is made, others in the ingredients used to make it.

In the early 1990's Kellogg's  made a cereal called Kenmei Rice Bran that was labeled gluten free and snapped up by gluten-free cereal lovers. Then it was gone.

The fear that gluten-free items won't last hovers in the back of the gluten-free consciousness. It's why we all get nervous when stories appear that say gluten free is just a fad. We worry that when the fad passes, companies will pack up their gluten-free labels and go home. While that wouldn't matter to people who've tried the gluten-free diet and moved on, it would make things much harder for those who have celiac disease and gluten intolerance and will be gluten free for life.

Perhaps these fears are unfounded. Yes, Hamburger Helper meals are off our gluten-free list, but Frito Lay products are more assuredly on it.

It's just the give and take of the gluten-free world.

Amy Ratner

Gluten-Free Cookie Keepers

In my last blog I wrote about trying some new cookie recipes from General Mills "live gluten freely" website.
I'm happy to report that not only did they look very appealing, they tasted great too.
The Russian tea cakes had the traditional short-bread texture, softened a bit by the powdery confectioner's sugar. No one suspected they were made without wheat flour. And surely no one would have guessed the key ingredient was gluten-free Bisquick.
The grasshopper bars are made with a base of Betty Crocker gluten-free devil's food cake mix, topped with creamy icing tinted green and flavored with mint. They were easy to cut and  the bottom held together unlike some gluten-free bar cookies that crumble. They tasted moist and had that terrific combination of chocolate and mint.
Since these two recipes turned out so well, I was encouraged to try at third from the website, holiday layer bars. I had originally put the recipe aside because it uses the Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix. I don't like the mix because it results in cookies that have that tale-tell gritty gluten-free taste and so many other chocolate chip recipes make much better cookies for less money. And the recipe called for candied cherries, which look and taste like plastic to me.
But I decided to just skip the cherries and see if this recipe, too, was a keeper.
The cookie mix forms the base of the bar, which is then topped by a mix of white baking chips, coconut, cashews and sweetened condensed milk. You end up with a rich, chewy bar. I think the rich topping helps cut the grittiness of the cookie bottom.
So I will file all three in my recipe box. You can find the recipes here.

Last minute gluten-free Christmas tips

I am at that point in the holidays when I don't ever want to be in a grocery store, department store, discount store or mall ever again.
At this point what I need most, I think, is the liquor store!
I jest.
Instead I am spending a lot of time in my kitchen making the holiday cookies that matter to me even though my family is scratching their heads over why we need so many different kinds.
A few years ago I started making almost exclusively gluten-free cookies. It saves me from having to keep my gluten-free daughter's cookies meticulously separated from cookies made with wheat flour.
In the early years, I made two versions of everything. My recipe cards still have notations on how to divide out a portion of the wet ingredients to mix with gluten-free flours.
But gluten-free flour mixes and recipes have improved so dramatically that I find the gluten-free cookies I make are fine for everyone.
I thought I would share some of the things I am doing this year, in case you are searching about for some ideas as the minutes count down to Christmas.

Birds' Nests

My family likes these treats made with a simple combination of one cup of  melted chocolate chips, one cup of melted peanut butter chips, one cup of potato sticks and one cup of peanuts mixed all together and dropped by a teaspoon onto wax paper laid on cookies sheets. Then just leave them to harden. The original recipe called for butterscotch chips, but I had trouble finding a brand that did not contain gluten from barley malt so I just switched to peanut butter chips.

This recipe couldn't be easier.

Peppermint Sticks

I found this recipe in an old magazine and thought it looked very pretty. Essentially, you dip the tips of old fashioned Peppermint Sticks in a chocolate mix made by combining four squares (1 oz) of bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate with 1 tablespoon of shortening in a saucepan and heating until melted. Dip one end of the stick into the chocolate, then dip that into chopped nuts or sprinkles.  Lay on wax paper until the chocolate hardens.

Peanut Blossoms

Aside from cut-out sugar cookies, these have to be one of the most popular holiday favorites. I always made two versions of this recipe until I realized that if you use a basic cookie recipe that calls for one cup of peanut butter, one cup of sugar and two eggs you will have a cookie that pleases everyone. After I mix the above ingredients I put the mixture in the refrigerator so it hardens up a little. Then I roll 1 inch balls, quickly roll them in granulated sugar and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. While the cookies are still warm and on the cookie sheets, I press one unwrapped Hershey Kiss onto each cookie. Unwrapping the kisses is a great job for a child, teenager or spouse who is otherwise not much into holiday baking.

This year I also added some cookies from General Mills "live gluten freely" website. I tried the grasshopper bars and the Russian tea cakes, which are interestingly made with the gluten-free Bisquick mix. Both were easy to make and handled well. (One reviewer who made the tea cakes said they fell apart when she tried to roll them in powdered sugar. I did not have this problem, but I waited until the cookies were just slightly warm before picking them up. I also handled them very gingerly). I still don't know if these cookies pass the taste test since I quickly packaged them up and put them away for the holidays. I will let you know if they get raves or boos from my family. You will also find a Peanut Blossom recipe on this site, but I am happy with my easy and relatively inexpensive version.

I hope these suggestions come in handy as you try to get everything done by Christmas Day.

Happy Holidays!

Amy Ratner