Product Review: Bob’s Red Mill Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

As I sit down to review this gluten free cookie mix I get a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Really, this has more to do with the circumstances surrounding the making of the cookies than the cookies themselves, but the feeling is there and probably always will be with this mix.

This feeling comes from the fact that it was while making these cookies that my daughter and I had a genuine after-school special moment. It was a cloudy afternoon and I had a ton of work to get done. I sent her to the kitchen to make some cookies with the promise that by the time the cookies were ready I would be ready for a break and we could spend some time together.

She did go to the kitchen, but it wasn’t long before I heard the banging and clanging that I associate with a cooking tantrum. I walked into the kitchen just as she was hitting critical mass. She turned and practically threw the mixing bowl at me.

“It won’t mix,” she declared, “Nothing wants to work right for me!” I sat down on a stool at the island and asked her for a spatula. The mix was indeed a bit dry and hard to mix, but it didn’t take much in the way of mommy super powers to see that it wasn’t just the cookies that she was upset about.

I used the spatula to combine the dough as best I could while she began pouring out her heart to me. She had taken residence in the stool next to me and kept an eye on my progress as we talked. The dough was still very crumbly when she said, “Here, Mom, I’ll just do it with my hands.”

I handed her the bowl and tried to give my very best advice while she took a turn at kneading the dough into submission. I realize that I am making it sound like these cookies take forever to make. They really don’t. At this point we were just taking our time and enjoying being together.

When it was mixed the dough was moist, but also dry and firm (dare I say crumbly?) We were giggling as we used our hands to rolls the dough into balls and flatten them on the sheet for baking. She gave me a big hug and put them in the oven.

I am not using clever symbology when I tell you that the sun had come out while we were mixing dough. We used the fifteen minutes the cookies needed to bake to go out on the porch and enjoy the day.

When the timer went off and the cookies came out of the oven they were pretty brown. I remembered the dry dough and figured we would be dealing with hard cookies. I looked at my girl and could tell she was thinking the same thing. We each grabbed a cookie and tried them together.

They were warm, moist, chewy, gooey and the perfect finish to our mother-daughter afternoon. We each ate way too many while laughing, talking and debating whether or not the cookies needed more chocolate chips. (I said yes, she said they were ok.)

So, I didn’t make my quota for work that day, and I don’t regret it a bit. I found something very special in that bag of Bob’s Red Mill Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix - I am so happy to report that the cookies themselves matched up to the experience.