Product Review: Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies

Product: Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies – $5.99+

Do you know how long it has been since I have eaten a Fig Newton?  Three years.  This journey began three years ago…and…I won’t lie to you…there are times I walk past items in the grocery store and it’s all I want.  Fig Newtons were one of my favorite snacks.  Always were…even growing up.  They were dropped from my diet when Celiac entered my life.  And I have missed them.  A lot.

While Jovial is one of my favorite makers of gluten-free pastas on the market, I hadn’t ventured much beyond that.  A few of our local natural food stores carry other Jovial items…like their gluten-free cookies.  I’ve just never justified spending money on them.  I know…I’m a cookie monster, but there are usually more pressing matters on my grocery list…like…whole foods and fruits and vegetables and…the non-processed, doesn’t come with a label, best foods out there for you kind of stuff.  And while I splurge every now and again, I find my budget growing tighter and tighter and my money less and less.

And it sucks.

But…sometimes…you end up in Birmingham, Alabama, visiting your family and splurges happen.  Often.  And this last visit, when my mom and I went shopping out at Organic Harvest, I decided that it was time to give into that craving to, perhaps, relive some Fig Newton goodness…and I purchased a box of Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies.  And they came home with me.  And…I kept staring at the box, wanting to open them…wanting to see if they were even close to reminiscent of my Fig Newton noshing days.

Well, the day finally came.  Today, while at work, my morning snack (because cookies in the morning is perfectly logical, yes?) became the Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies.  Hey…cookies with fruit in them can be a good morning snack!  Right?!

I knew you’d agree with me!

So…at 10:30 a.m….I opened up my little package of figgy cookie goodness…and took my first taste.

So…here’s the deal with the Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies…

They do taste a lot like Fig Newtons.  They really do.  Except for one…very minor…but important detail.  The cookie part…the part that encases the entire figgy center…is so dry.  It’s so dry that it’s crumbly.  Think…shortbread texture.  That’s what it immediately reminded me of.  And the fact that it didn’t have that rich, soft, gooeyness that Fig Newtons had (you know…one bite and it all melts together), was actually more of a let down.  The flavor is spot on!  I LOVE that part.  But I found the fig center to be under-stuffed and that cookie to be dry and a bit of a distraction from the fig fruit middle.  It was disappointing, but not disgusting.  I will (and intend to) polish off this box of cookies…but I don’t think I’ll purchase them again.  At least not in the near future.  My roomie tried one too…and she thought the same thing about both the cookie and the lack of fig center.  And she has recently had both Fig Newtons and Fig Newmans…so, she’s in the right figgy frame of mind for this.

Ingredient-wise, these are actually really well put together.  They are made from organic figs, organic rice flour, organic sugar, organic potato starch, organic palm fruit oil, organic rice starch, organic rice syrup, organic eggs, organic chick pea flour, organic arabic gum, leavening, salt, pectin, citric acid, and guar gum.  They are gluten-free and casein-free.  And, granted, these are the first gluten-free option for people who love figs!  I will give them that!  And, according to the Web site, the Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies are baked in small batches with ingredients that are mixed by hand.  They use a unique and delicate process to hide the filling completely inside the cookie before baking (unlike Fig Newtons & Fig Newmans where you see the fig filling on each end).

Nutritionally speaking, a serving size of the Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies is 2 cookies.  These two little two-bite cookies serve you up 130 calories and 4 grams of fat.  Two cookies will also provide you with 5 mg cholesterol, 65 mg sodium, and 12 grams of sugar (YIKES!).  Additionally, you will be taking in 1 gram of fiber and 1 gram of protein…so this is not a filling treat either.  Just keep that in mind.

Yes…I was disappointed by the cookie shell of the Jovial Gluten Free Fig Fruit Filled Cookies, but…they weren’t a complete loss.  The flavors were there.  The cookie was just crumbly and the filling a bit scant, that’s all.  And that’s me…being the cookie monster that I am…looking for the quality that I pay for.  And these cookies are not cheap.  Like I said, I’d eat them again…sure.  But I won’t actively seek them out on a consistent basis.  I would, however, like to try the other two cookie options available by Jovial.