Get Sugar-Free and Gluten-Free With a Little Help from The Butterfly Bakery

About 3 years ago, a doctor I used to see was “almost positive” I had gluten intolerance due to having Celiac Disease. While he was wrong about that diagnosis (since he also thought he removed my gall bladder, since he was reading a man’s chart rather than MY chart), I was forced to spend a whole week of my life thinking I wasn’t going to be able to eat bread anymore. In case you don’t know this, I love bread more than any other food on the planet, except for chocolate. Actually, I like my chocolate in a baked, gluten-heavy form, so you can imagine my grief at hearing I might never eat a loaf of sour dough bread or a baked brownie again. Wanting to take that diagnosis seriously, I spent that whole week alternating between heavy bread purging and trying out various gluten-free foods from my local health food store. Every gluten-free chip, bread, pretzel, pasta, cookie and canned or frozen food I tasted was like eating a box of chalk–and it tasted HORRIBLE! I was angry about the misdiagnosis, spending $125 on wasted groceries and a gluten-free book, and because I had experienced tasting the worst gluten-free breads and snacks of all time.

 

People are always telling me that gluten-free foods are tasty, and I never believe them. When I found out that the Butterfly Bakery was looking for bloggers to try out their sugar-free, no sugar added and gluten-free baked goods “Made with 100% Love”, I was intrigued. Not only do I love to try out new snack foods, but I wanted to snack on something a little healthier, as well as give gluten-free foods another shot, especially since I wouldn’t be paying to try them out. I was dying to try out their Sugar Free Double Chocolate Chip Muffins, because it was a snack that all my family members could eat, and one I would buy online at Amazon.com if we ended up loving it. Sadly, Butterfly Bakery didn’t send me any chocolate items per my request, but they did send me a package of their Gluten-Free Sliced Lemon Citrus Cream Cake and their Sugar-Free Angel Food Cake.

While I love anything lemon, my step-children wouldn’t dare touch it with a ten foot pole. Needless to say, they refused to try the lemon came, at a time when I was deathly ill with Bronchitis and hadn’t grocery shopped for 1 month. (I am not even exaggerating!) My hubby and I both tried it, and while he thought it had a “slight chalky-like consistency” the first time he tried it, we both enjoyed eating it very much, and not just because we had been living off cereal for days. My hubby sums up his take on the cake as “good for gluten-free,” while I think of it as just “good.” The first time I tried the cake, I could tell it had a little different texture then other lemon cakes I have tasted, but we both didn’t notice the difference in texture after that first time we tasted the cake. I would certainly buy this treat in the future, if it was available in my local grocery store, but I don’t think I’d go so far as to order it online unless I had a need to serve gluten-free desert to a guest. If I had sampled something chocolate-based from them and I liked it as much as I liked the cake, I would definitely order their baked goods online, because I will go the distance when it comes to chocolate!

The Sugar-Free Angel Food Cake was surprisingly excellent. I could not tell the difference in taste between regular Angle Food Cake and their cake. I used to love to eat Angel Food Cake as a kid–my gramma and mother both adored it, and I would get to eat it with fresh strawberries and whipped cream at least twice every summer. One of my kids tried it, along with hubby and I, and he told me “It was pretty good.” This is coming from a kid who refuses to use condiments, and who only ate six foods when I met him. To say he is a picky eater is the understatement of the year. He had never tasted Angel Food Cake, since most non-chocolate desserts don’t appeal to him, so I was shocked when the three of us were all fighting to eat it. With so many people getting Diabetes these days, I think this is a great sugar-free desert to have on hand.

The Butterfly Bakery has been around since 1998, when their founder began experimenting with sugar-free recipes for her diabetic mother, which of course explains their cute “Made with 100% Love” tagline. Those recipes became the basis for their line of 75 different varieties of baked goods, which come in color coded product lines such as pink for sugar-free, blue for no sugar added, orange for gluten-free, purple for low calorie, and yellow for whole grain. Butterfly Bakery goods are available for sale in their home state of New Jersey, as well as supermarkets and specialty stores nationwide. If you live in Michigan like me, you can find their products in the bakery department of Spartan Stores, or you can order them directly from Amazon.com.

To find out more about the Butterfly Bakery and the products they offer, check them out at TheButterflyBakery.com.