Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Brownies – Product Review

We don’t have a Trader Joe’s market in our town, so when a friend brought me this brownie mix from a trip to Trader Joe’s, I was thrilled. My objective was to transform this gluten-free mix into an allergen-free mix. The mix starts with no wheat, milk, eggs, soy, corn, peanuts or tree nuts – so it was an ideal candidate for one of my transformational baking projects.

My experiment was a dismal failure.

Despite my best effort at substituting ingredients, I have to admit that my approach just didn't work.

The first ingredient in this mix is evaporated cane juice, followed by sweet brown rice flour. And with cocoa as the third ingredient, I was expecting a very fudgy brownie.

My substitution attempt was simple – replace the egg with ¼ cup of applesauce. The other added ingredients – oil and water – were according to the package.

So why didn’t this work? 

While I can almost always make a gluten-free mix work allergen-free, my first attempt with this mix failed. Next time I will try it with Ener-g egg replacer, and reduce the baking time. In the meantime, I'm off to whip up a batch of my favorite Pamela’s brownies.