With Halloween less than a week away, you’ve likely started thinking about all the candy your kids are going to get and how to sneak some of the gluten free halloween candy out of their pile and into yours. What you also are starting to think about is the tasty desserts that will abound after dinner, and how you’ll make them gluten free.
Our friends over at Udi’s Gluten Free (and really, any Celiac sufferer’s friend) were thinking the same thing. So they sent us over a little care package of gluten free goodies to see what we’d come up with for great tasting desserts. Unfortunately, the stuff was just too tasty and none of the items lasted long enough to become desserts, but we had some great ideas anyways!
The treats in our Udi’s Halloween Treats package
As you can see on the right, we got pretty spoiled with good stuff. There’s a loaf of Udi’s Cinnamon Raisin bread, a box of Udi’s Chocolate Chia Muffin Tops, a bag of Udi’s Vanilla Granola, a box of Udi’s Snicker Doodle cookies, and a box of Udi’s Dark Chocolate Brownie Bites.
Some of our favorite ideas were to make a nice bread pudding out of the bread. Cinnamon and raisins are staples in bread pudding, so that was the first idea that popped into my head. Udi’s has a nice recipe for a Maple Raisin Bread Pudding on their site. It’s not commonly thought of as a dessert, but I think you could make some very good french toast dipping sticks with these. A nice dusting of powdered sugar, and some syrup or sweet whipped cream to dip them in.
Udi’s granola is a pretty versatile staple in our house. We use it all the time mixed into a cup of yogurt, but I think it would make an excellent topping for a fruit crumble. A little brown sugar, melted butter, and some Udi’s granola sprinkled liberally over your favorite crumble recipe. Yum. A simpler use might be just putting it directly onto ice cream or frozen yogurt.
The dark chocolate brownie bites are a pretty tasty dessert by themselves, but I really want to try them warmed up at the bottom of a bowl of ice cream with some fudge drizzled over the top. They’re just the right size for making the popular cake pops with as well.
Snicker Doodle cookies are a pretty universal treat. They’re good as is, but they can be used in all kinds of desserts. Crumbled, they make a great crust for a cheesecake, or pumpkin pie. They go well with ice cream and are one of the key ingredients, along with the Chocolate Chia muffin tops, in Udi’s recipe for Snickerdoodle Ice Cream Chocolate Whoopie Sandwiches. Which brings us to the muffin tops. As I just mentioned, they lend themselves really well to whoopie pie sandwiches. Frosted orange, they become pumpkins.
With the abundance of gluten free products on the market now, eating gluten free isn’t the bland wasteland that it used to be. Companies like Udi’s are pioneers in making gluten free food that tastes as good, or better, than it’s wheat based brethren. Whatever your plans for Halloween, make it a safe one. Not only on the streets, but in the kitchen as well.
