Thursday, December 22, 2011

Product Review: Udi's Gluten Free Bagels and Muffins


{Disclosure: While Udi's did provide me with the samples and asked for my review, I was not compensated in any way.  The following review is an honest and true review of what I thought of these products.}

So, Udi's sent me a breakfast baked goods sampler box last week to review on my blog.

This statement is from the side of the box...

"Udi's Gluten Free is committed to creating baked goods that taste absolutely incredible-and we do it all within a 100% certified gluten-free facility."


I've been asked before by other gluten-free companies to review their products and they sent me coupons to buy the products locally, from the freezer section.  No bread tastes good from the freezer.  In my opinion frozen bread products are only good for toasting not for a nice soft sandwich.  I was delighted to discover that Udi's sent a box of "FRESH" samples to try, along with a few coupons.

Here is the box as it arrived.

When opened, the box had all of this in it.

Double Chocolate Muffins
Lemon Streusel Muffins
 Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
 Plain Bagels

This was a rare experience for me, to get to sample fresh gluten-free products and let me tell you, FRESH is much better than frozen.  =]

Lets start with my least favorite product, the lemon streusel muffins.  First off I don't particularly care for lemon streusel anything, but these were interestingly different.  I found them really dry.  They come in a package of 4 and appear to be baked right in the package.

They had this odd white powdery dust all over them (streusel?)

Here is a picture of the inside of one.

Again, these weren't my favorite.  In fact, I didn't like these and most likely will never purchase them.  I prefer a moister muffin.

Now let's move on to the double chocolate muffins.  These were Shawn's favorite and he wanted me to mention that he thought they were delicious.   They came packaged the same way as the lemon streusel muffins.

I still thought they were a bit drier than I like my muffins to be, but, I also thought they were suitably delicious and Shawn and I had a hard time deciding who got to eat them.  I gave in and let Shawn have 3 of the 4 muffins.  That made him happy.  I will definitely be purchasing more of these when I can find them fresh.

Here is a picture of the inside of one.

Moving right along to the plain bagels.

They seemed soft and squishy when I gave the bag a gentle squeeze.  I opened the bag and spread cream cheese on half of one and peanut butter with honey on the other half.  They tasted good but did not have the texture of a bagel when chewing it up.  They were also extremely dry textured while chewing.  I decided to microwave the next one to soften it up.  This proved to be magical.  Microwaving the bagel made it softer, chewier, and moister feeling in my mouth.  It also seemed to chew with a nice bagel-like texture now.  Delicious!

We made turkey sandwiches out of the remaining two and we both enjoyed it.


I highly recommend the bagels, just don't forget to microwave them a bit for texture.  We will buy these again.

Last but not least was the cinnamon raisin bagels.  Shawn wouldn't even try them, but that is more of a personal issue he has with raisins.

I really liked them.  I microwaved them for texture, had them as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, had them with cream cheese, and had them plain.  All ways were delicious!

We will buy the bagels again, even frozen, because we froze some of the bagels and thawed by microwave to test for degradation of quality and they were still delicious.  We will definitely buy the double chocolate muffins again.  We will not be buying the lemon streusel muffins.

Enjoy!

You can learn more about Udi's by visiting their website.
www.udisglutenfree.com