New Namaste

As you may know, "Namaste" is a greeting that means "I bow to the god within you that is also in me." Well, I bow to Namaste's gluten-free goodness that is in my tummy. Scott has said that he could (almost) be a vegetarian if that meant eating Indian food all the time. We are not gluten free, but I (almost) could be thanks to Namaste. At dessert time, anyway.

We just tried five of Namaste's new products, and we liked four of the five.

First, we used their Chocolate Cake Mix, which makes a two-layer cake or a sheet cake. We frosted it with their new Chocolate Fudge Frosting Mix. It was "make-your-face sweat" good. So rich, so fudgy, so moist. Excellent.

Ingredients: Cake mix: Evaporated cane juice, sweet brown rice flour, tapioca flour, Dutch cocoa, arrowroot flour, rice milk powder, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, and xanthan gum.
Frosting mix: Brown sugar, Dutch cocoa, rice milk powder, and salt.

We also tried Namaste's new Toffee Vanilla Frosting Mix on top of Alisa's white cake. The frosting's flavor was great--like penuche--but there was a bit of grittyness from the brown sugar. Genius that I am, I decided to solve this problem by spreading the frosting on a still-warm cake. It tasted great, but it looked like the face melt from Indiana Jones. [I realize this is my fault, not theirs.] And you gotta love how short the ingredient list is, especially compared to other store-bought frostings.

Ingredients: Brown sugar, rice milk powder, salt, and pure ground vanilla bean.

I used their Perfect Flour Blend to make Molasses Cake (the recipe is on the back of the bag), and it worked really well. The cake tastes like gingerbread without the ginger, and the texture and moistness was similar to their cake mixes. I'm guessing this flour mixture is similar to what's used in the cake mixes.

Ingredients: Sweet brown rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot flour, sorghum flour, and xanthan gum.



And... we tried the Biscuits, Piecrust & More! mix. We really tried. We made biscuits. We made piecrust. No one liked the biscuits: the texture was too firm and the taste was too baking powder-y. The piecrust was similar to other GF piecrusts we've tried. It was better than the biscuits, but still a bit sandy in texture for my taste. This is where it's hard for me to fairly judge GF products, as I am easily able to whip up a batch of biscuits with gluten. But if I weren't, would I like the ease and taste of these? I don't know. The package also has directions for coffee cake, but I think I'd use the Perfect Flour Blend instead.






Rhubarb Pie. Kind of.

Ingredients: Sweet brown rice flour, brown rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot flour, sorghum flour, rice milk powder, cream of tartar, xanthan gum, baking soda, and salt.

Overall, we are Namaste fans, especially when it comes to their cake mixes and frostings.