Lemon cupcakes from Katz

For some reason, I've not been able to find the Katz gluten-free apple fritters at Sprouts.  I haven't looked elsewhere for them yet, but plan to eventually.  Anyway, with graduation season upon us, I picked up a box of Katz gluten-free lemon cupcakes so I'd have something handy to throw in a cooler for short road trips to family graduations.  My fave lemon cupcakes from lucky Spoon have also been MIA at Sprouts of late.  Since the Katz option is individually packaged, they're better for travel anyway.     

I ended up not using the Katz treats for my travels as I found some other tasty things to take instead. But the lemon cupcakes from Katz were pretty good.  I really like the icing and prefer to eat the cake when it's not fully thawed out...it reminds me of a lemon icebox cake..though a gf version of one, for sure.  Please note that the amount of filling IRL is in no way, shape or form indicated in the image on the box.  That is almost always the case for anything filled, for some reason.  And the filling that is there hardly has any lemon flavor to it at all. 

There are four units per box.  For the price of approximately $1.25 per cupcake, it's a decent value in the gf world.  My favorite ready-made treat, which I finally found here, runs $5.99 for one piece so not a good value at all.  More about that irresistible treat later.       

Gluten-free fried onions

This post should have gone up in December, but I found myself overwhelmed during the holidays.  Everyone probably feels this way, but a kitchen remodel thrown into the mix really took it's toll on my holiday spirit and energy level ;)

   
For many years, I made homemade fried onions for my traditional green casserole.  I'd found a few gf brands of onions, but none were good enough to buy twice.  Last year I finally found a decent tasting shelf stable fried onion - Loeb's - at Publix.  They were packaged in a bag and are now in a plastic jar.  Either way, the onions were a suitable substitute for the French's brand of fried onions many of us grew up with.

Then, last month, an email from findmeglutenfree announced the availability of several brands of fried onions just in time for the holidays!  I noticed that the Sprouts brand was listed so that's the product I decided to try.  They are possibly the exact product from Loeb's as the ingredients are exactly the same (onion, buckwheat, vegetable oil and salt).  However, for some reason I can't pin down, I prefer the taste of the Sprouts product.  Aldi has a similar product which I'll probably try eventually.  So far, nothing tastes just like the French's brand, but that's okay.  That product has a form of sugar in it which, like many people, I can do without.


PRODUCT NOTE:  buckwheat is in fact, not related to wheat - nor is it a grain.  It's plant based and is completely gluten-free.