Quinoa Cookies

While dashing through Whole Foods on my lunch hour on a fruitless search for pre-packaged Daiya, I happened passed a display of samples for Andean Cookies: made with quinoa.  Quinoa?  In cookies?  I grabbed a few as I made my way to customer service to inquire- yet again- as to when they expect the Daiya.  Same drill: I have to explain what it is whilst they look at me quizzically, then spell in a million times and wait whilst they call people from "dairy", pre-packaged goods, etc., only to ultimately be told that Daiya doesn't come pre-packaged.  I suppose they're right in the if-we-don't-carry-it,-it-doesn't-exist way of thinking.  Argh.  At least my annoyance was slightly hedged by the unexpected cookie booty.

I went back to my office and googled Andean; it seems they offer three types of quinoa pasta and five flavors of quinoa cookies.  I had snagged chocolate chip (score!) and cocoa orange (skeptical), but the other varieties available are orange essence (too fruity for me), raisins & spice (crumbled on pumpkin pie?), and coconut (yum!). 

Although the website lists ingredients, there was no mention of the word vegan (although gluten-free is prominently displayed) that I could find.  I emailed the company and received a response from the owner practically immediately, confirming that all of the products are vegan.  A+ for customer service, A+ for being vegan, C- for not clearly and proudly proclaiming vegan status.  Say it proud, people:  **update: A+ for printing "vegan" on the packaging.  And an F for me for not noticing; thanks to Anonymous for pointing out my error!

I tried the cocoa orange first, expecting not to like the fruitiness.  Surprisingly, the citrus flavor was so subtle that it merely added a pleasant layer to the overall chocolatey taste of the cookie, instead of a gag-worthy fruit/chocolate combo.  The taste and the texture reminded me of those little chocolate cookies that came in kid-sized boxes with a string handle in the 70's; you know the one, the front of the box had a picture of a chocolate cookie with a drawing of a cat-face on it?  ** update: Nabisco Chocolate Snaps from the eighties!  Anyhoo, the cocoa orange was suprisingly yummy.

Next up was the chocolate chip.  I am a big fan of chocolate chip cookies, yet I rarely find one that I like.  This cookie was good!  Not only was it full of plenty of chips, but the little quinoas were like tiny crispies; much better than I could have imagined and definitely my favorite of the two tasty varieties.  I think that this is what is referred to in the ingredients as "quinoa pop grains".  Pop, crunch, crispy: whatever; they added a delicious crunch to the otherwise sufficiently yummy cookie.

The texture of both of these cookies was crunchy, but not dry; I wouldn't have guessed they were gluten-free.  Overall this was a nice find and I wanted to give the company a little shout-out on my tiny blog.  Good looking out for the vegans!