My husband is an architect and has been working in Portland for 20 years. About a year ago he had a project over on MLK and Killingsworth. This project was awesome. I have no idea what was being built but at least a few times a week he came home with a smile, and a gluten-free vegan sea salt chocolate chip cookie from Tula Bakery just a few blocks away (on MLK and Alberta.) I’m not a sweets person in general but let me tell you that these cookies blew me away.
When I got an email last week from Tula’s PR maven Lisa Hill to let me know there were some special holiday goodies on the menu I jumped at the chance to try them. And they did not disappoint!
We started with the par-baked focaccia bread which I was thrilled to see didn’t contain rice (my little one has an allergy to brown rice). Ingredients include millet flour, sorghum flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, water, agave syrup, yeast, xanthan gum, sea salt, and olive oil. We basted it with a little more olive oil halfway through the bake and polished the entire thing off between the 3 of us. Smothered with butter Soy-free Earth Balance and drizzled with honey, it was absolutely divine.
The rest of the treats my husband loved but as I mentioned I’m not the biggest sweets fan so after his thumbs up across the board, I loaded them up and trucked over to my girlfriend’s house down the street. She bakes, and loves sweets, so I felt she would be the perfect taste tester.
We had samples of the cranberry pecan bread, the chocolate pomegranate tart, and a chocolate hazelnut roll. She thought they were all top quality baked goods, period. Her husband came home and we let him dig in and finish them off. I hate the cliché of ‘good for gluten-free.’ But the look of surprise on his face when we told him, and his response (mouth still full) “That’s pretty damn good for gluten-free food.” had to be shared because it means you don’t need to give a second thought to feeding any of this to your most discerning, foodie, nose-in-the-air, ‘gluten-free is a fad’ relatives, colleagues, or friends over the holidays. It’s just great food, period.
Here is a link to the holiday order form, and a link to their site. Go get it!
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