If you are restricted to wheat-free, dairy-free, soy-free, low-carb, or no-added-sugar diet, or if you want to move to a healthier diet, you need to read this post. It might just change your life… as well as your perspective about achieving it.
Whether you are allergic to something or are following a food plan that limits certain ingredients, it might be hard for you to follow if you feel like you are being deprived of some foods that you like or crave. It always seemed to me that having to give up specific foods or ingredients was ok for a while, but to give it up permanently???? I am definitely skeptical.
I did a 3 -Day Keto Cleanse and I found it difficult to get through it. It was so sparse in providing the food that I typically ate. Once I got into the larger protein portions, I adjusted quickly. I realized that the “no sugar, no bread, no fill-in-the-blank” was extremely challenging, but once I got through those 3 days, I found my desire for sweets had pretty much vanished! It was a shock but a shock I embraced I have started reading labels and trying to control the amount of added sugar that is in the foods I eat! I did feel a bit deprived because I couldn’t eat things that I liked but I found substitutes that were not revolving around sugar.
Recently, I was “cruising” through my InBox and saw an interesting email about a product line that had wheat-free, dairy-free, soy-free, low-carb, or no-added-sugar mixes. Typically, I am skeptical about products having eliminated negative ingredients and that the resulting product was actually tasty. but what I read intrigued me and I went to the Good Dees website to check out the product images and the ingredients for various mixes. I quickly replied to the email and asked for more information.. and they generously offered to send me samples (Reviews are below!)
What Is Good Dees?
Created and founded by native Texan-turned-New Yorker Deana Karim, Good Dees proves that health-conscious living and decadent indulgence really do mix. Give in to cravings guilt-free with Good Dees complete collection of baking mixes designed for low-carb, restricted, and special diets.
The tasty solution to a lifetime of deprivation and struggle with weight gain, Good Dees offers innovative, full-flavor mixes free of gluten, soy, dairy, wheat, and added sugar. Also available in a nut-free brownie, blondies, chocolate snack cake, and muffin mix.
Visit the Good Dees website and check out the wide variety of mixes they have. Their range includes breakfast mixes (waffles, pancakes, muffins and “bundle” options. ); cookies (4 varieties plus “bundle” options); almond flour mixes that include crackers, cookies, and cakes; and Sunflower Seed Mixes that include muffins, cakes, brownies, and cookies. The array of products is amazing!
Plus the brand has recently launched 3 new products. The innovative bakers at Good Dees have introduced three new low-carb, mouthwatering baking mixes and NEW confections: Butter Pecan Cookies as well as Sugar-Free Maple Syrup, and Sugar-Free Sprinkles in blue and rainbow varieties.
Born out of a love for baked goods and a passion for healthy living, Good Dees proudly uses only the highest-quality, innovative ingredients. Made with no added sugar and nothing but real, honest ingredients, Good Dees’ complete line of sweet and savory all-in-one baking mixes delivers full flavor free of nonsense. The ideal choice for gluten, soy and dairy-free diets, great taste meets good health in these KETO-friendly, guilt-free options the whole family will gladly devour.
About Deana Karim:
Deana Karim, the founder of Good Dees!
For years, Deana Karim searched high and low for the perfect cookie. A lifelong struggle with weight gain and a family history of diabetes limited Karim to low-fat options, which lacked the full flavor of traditional baked goods while hiding some undesirable ingredients of their own. Unable to find an alternative that could satisfy sweet cravings and help maintain a healthy lifestyle, Karim resolved to create her own.
After the birth of Karim’s second child, she set to work launching Good Dee’s. The company featured a variety of baking mixes, from brownies to pancakes to cookies. A first-generation Middle Eastern immigrant who grew up watching her father start and run a successful business, Karim immediately took to entrepreneurship. Now with an expanded collection offering everything from cracker biscuit and grain-free cornbread to blondies and chocolate chip cookie one-bag mixes, Good Dee’s proves that a healthy lifestyle and good eats really do mix.
“I realized that if I kept depriving myself and thinking I was on a diet, I would fail,” explains Good Dees founder and head creator, Deana Karim. “I embraced going low-carb and sugar-free and looked up alternative sweeteners.”
With overwhelming approval by eaters of all different diets and lifestyles, Karim has quickly expanded her low-carb, sugar and gluten-free collection to include grain-free options, as well as fan-favorites like Chocolate Snack Cake, Blondies, and Cracker Biscuit mixes.
Now, Good Dees pumps up the summertime flavor with three delectable new confections that make it “easy as pie” to whip up a tasty summer treat everyone will feel good about eating.
–Delight guests at the next neighborhood barbecue with all new Butter Pecan Cookie, brimming with light, buttery goodness. —Drizzle Sugar-Free Maple Syrup on waffles and pancakes, or use it to lightly sweeten iced coffee drinks and homemade granola.
—Top summertime confections with Sugar-Free Sprinkles in “It’s a Circus” (rainbow) and “Keep It Chill” (blue) – perfect for an eye-popping summer spread.
Shop the full line of mouthwatering grain, wheat, gluten, and sugar-free mixes, priced at $11.99 each at GoodDees.com. Check out an impressive nut-free collection of brownies, cakes, and muffins. When you try them, you will be surprised at how tasty they are. You won’t miss the sugar!
Stevie’s Reviews:
I was sent 3 different mixes to try: coconut cake, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate brownies. My first effort was brownies.
If you follow me or saw my feed on Instagram, you might have seen the brownie photos because I took the time to share images of the process of making these brownies!
Brownies:
As you can see this is a unique brownie mix. It’s low-carb, grain/sugar/gluten/soy-free.
They are great for Ketogenic, Diabetic, and LCHF lifestyles-or for those just wanting to reduce their sugar intake and watch what ingredients go in their body! We use erythritol and stevia to give it a sweetness and sunflower seeds to keep it flourless.
We also use no nut based ingredients!
( Quote from the brownie page).
Honestly, that’s a lot of ingredients to be minus -which is why I made this one up first. (This mix is also maltitol-free!) My attitude was if they can pull it off successfully, I would be trying a lot more products from their collection.
Here are the photos that I took of the Brownie-making process:
Ingredients:
This was an interesting recipe and I made sure to follow the instructions exactly as the recipe specified.
The recipe gave me an option of making a cake-like brownie or a fudgy-type brownie. Personally, I am not a fan of cake brownies.
I am definitely a fudgy-type brownie girl which you can see in the last “brownie” photo.
In the pan before baking:
Spreading the brownie batter was trickier than I thought but I was patient and worked slowly on it.
After baking as it is cooling:
The brownies are out of the oven and waiting to cool off.
COOLED off after baking (and it’s looking good)
We could NOT resist cutting into the brownies! These are really good when only slightly warm.
And as you can see, we couldn’t stop eating them. I cut them into small chunks
because I wanted to track the flavor and texture as it cooled off.
Cross-section of brownies:
Here’s the proof of the chewy-ness and texture of the brownies. I liked these. We were digging into the brownies FAST.
I needed to keep some brownies to see how the flavor held up after 3-4 days so I hid these brownies in the refrigerator.
there was very little left and then I turned into a base for an ice cream dessert!
Review:
These brownies made my house smell delicious as they were baking. I was very surprised at how chocolatey they were. They weren’t overly sweet, but they had a nice chocolate flavor that I prefer to something overly sweet. The chocolate/cacao flavor was clearly predominant which is what made them a really great dessert!
My family loved these brownies. I was really surprised that a picky child and picky husband went for these- but they did. (And that’s the reason I hid the last slivers of brownies in the refrigerator because they would have been long gone before I finished the review! ). I highly recommend this mix!
Chocolate Chip Cookies!
I am a HUGE chocolate chip cookie fan. I used to make them a lot and they would vanish in less than 5 days because I make a pretty good cookie. . Between snacking on the chocolate morsels when making the cookies and then eating lots of cookies after the baking, I realized that making these cookies wasn’t helping me at all. I could not resist the chocolate morsels or cookies.
Good Dees chocolate chip cookie mix is unique in the ingredients. This mix is grain/sugar/gluten/wheat-free. However, soy is an ingredient- so please make sure that you check every mix you try to see if the ingredients (or lack thereof) are there.
(See it on the package as well as on the chocolate chip mix page.)
Here are images of my cooking process:
These photos will hit my Instagram page over the next few days. I will post the link on this post in case you want to see them.
Ingredients:
The short brown bottle is Trader Joe’s Vanilla extract.
Ready for the oven!
These cookies were supposed to be cooked on parchment. It also saved me from scraping cookies off the cookie sheet!
Out of the oven!
These cookies are thin and crisp- but not yet because they haven’t completely cooled.
If you don’t wait till they cool off, they will fall apart! They do smell heavenly- and they taste good and chocolatey!
REVIEW:
Cooled Cookies
This recipe is different from most cookies but it was simple to do. I had the option to use melted coconut oil or regular butter. I prefer a buttery taste over the coconut oil so that was a non-issue. The tricky part was not to overmix it because the chocolate chips were small and I didn’t want them breaking up. I followed the recipe precisely and found that it was pretty darn easy.
Note: It was important to stick around in the kitchen when baking the cookies because the cookies were going to be done in approximately 15 minutes. There was a caveat on the bag that one should keep checking the cookies for golden edges because that was when they were done. Not golden cookies– but golden edges. I kept checking my oven and when the edges were golden, I removed the cookies from the oven.
I got a perfect batch. I waited about 25 minutes to make sure they were cooled before splitting a cookie with the picky husband. He loved them. They are light, crisp and have a bit of a sunflower seed flavor. If you don’t like sunflower seeds, this cookie isn’t for you. If your kids think it tastes weird or different, it might be because they are not used to the sunflower seed flour. My picky kid thought it was not the “real deal” chocolate chip- so she gave it a thumbs down. My husband and I disagree; we like that nice nutty bit of flavor from sunflower flour. These cookies hold up really well in a container or a zip lock bag provided that they aren’t sliding around in the container or zipper bag. These cookies are delicate and because they are so thin they will break. The cookies are a great partner for coffee, tea or even a cocktail.
If you want the traditional chocolate chip cookie, this might not be your ‘thing.” There are other cookies from Good Dees that sound amazing! My preference is for these cookies because there is no sugar which is MY GOAL !
Coconut Cake: I have the coconut cake mix, but I haven’t made it yet.
About Good Dees:
Learn more and shop all flavors and varieties, priced at just $11.99 each, online at GoodDees.com.
Find inspirational recipes and baking ideas on Instagram @GoodDeesMix.
You can follow Good Dees via these social channels:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodDeesMix/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gooddeesmix
Thank you to Good Dees and their amazing staff. They have been so much fun to work with. They made this process really easy and the mixes turn out tasty treats that you might not have been able to have otherwise. I highly recommend this brand!!
Stevie Wilson,
LA-Story.com
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