Monthly Clubs in the Mail Today
September’s monthly club orders of vegan brownies, cookies and fudge are in the mail today and will be arriving on club members’ doorsteps later in the week. If you’re reading this and wishing that vegan brownies were going to be arriving on your doorstep this week, a monthly club could be in your future. Quick and easy to sign up for, our monthly clubs automatically deliver delicious vegan sweets to you or someone you love, every month, hassle-free. Check it out!
Summertime Shipping and Eco-Friendly Chill Packs
Summer can be a hard time for shipping perishables. So much of the shipping process is out of our hands, and packages often sit in hot trucks, and on sunny porches before being opened and enjoyed.
Not to be deterred by a little heat, however, we’re pleased to offer a styrofoam-free, eco-conscious chill pack option for shipping vegan chocolates and other perishable items in warm weather. Our chill packs create much less waste and are lighter and more efficient to ship than traditional styrofoam boxes. Plus, we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee on all of our vegan chocolates and other confections and baked goods, when you follow our shipping guidelines.
Here are some tips for shipping perishable items in summer heat:
- Always include our recommended chill pack and ship via FedEx 2-day air.
- Ship to an address where someone will be present to receive the package.
- Do NOT include “deliver without signature” or “leave at front door” in the note to driver line. (These notes allows FedEx to leave packages in unknown conditions).
- If you’re shipping to a location over 90ºF, consider less perishable items like caramels, non-chocolate toffee and brittle, cookies and brownies.
- If you are unsatisfied with your products upon delivery and you followed the shipping guidelines above, write us an email with the details of your order for credit or re-shipment free of charge.
Looking Forward to Tropical Brownies in August
We just completed a successful test of next month’s (Wheat-Free) Toasted Coconut Brownies, and let me tell you, they are gorgeous! 
Beautiful white coconut ribbons get layered on top of our luscious dark chocolate vegan brownies like a tropical chocolate paradise. Then, as they bake, the coconut toasts to golden perfection and these decadent vegan brownies look and taste absolutely angelic. So, if you can’t get away to the tropics this summer, let our tropical brownies come to you!
Coconut Ice Cream with Sautéed Spiced Apples…YUM!
Just because she owns a rockin’ vegan bakery doesn’t mean that Allison’s creativity in the kitchen stops at brownies and confections. Many of her creations, like this awesome Coconut Ice Cream with Sautéed Spiced Apples, we would love to be able to share with you, but they just wouldn’t survive the shipping. 
So, we’ll tantalize you with this photo instead, and encourage you to try your own version of this decadent dessert.
Allison makes her own vanilla bean coconut ice cream, but for us mere mortals, there are several excellent vegan ice cream choices available in most health food stores. My favorite is Turtle Mountain’s Purely Decadent Made with Coconut Milk. As for the Sautéed Spiced Apples, here’s Allison’s recipe:
What to use…
4 Gala or Fuji Apples
1 tablespoon lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1 teaspoon non-hydrogenated vegan margarine
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon mace
1/8 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
…and how
1. Wash, peel, core, and slice the apples into 1/4-inch thick slices. in a large bowl, toss with lemon juice and set aside.
2. Over medium-high heat, place a large skillet. Add margarine, spices, salt, and prepared apples. Saute for 5 minutes. Reduce heat and cover. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until soft.
3. Serve over your favorite vegan ice cream.
That’s it, just few easy steps! You don’t have to own a vegan bakery to make outrageous desserts for yourself and your friends!
Summer’s Flavor Highlights
Monthly Clubs will be arriving on doorsteps today or tomorrow and while everyone’s munching their new delicacies, I wanted to give you the highlights of what you can look forward to flavor-wise this summer. 
Next month we’re bringing back an old favorite, soft peanut butter cookies, and to complete the all-American feeling, we’re also offering an out-of-this-world Apple Pie white fudge in July that you have to try to believe. August offers my favorite Toasted Coconut brownies, which are as delicious as they are beautiful, and we finish up summer with classic spiced Oatmeal Raisin cookies and everyone’s favorite Butterscotch Pecan white fudge. So mark your calendars, or treats yourself or someone you love to a monthly club for the summer to sample all these great flavors and more!
Speaking of flavor highlights, I noticed that Key Lime and Peanut Butter were two of the top choices on our favorite flavors poll on Facebook last week and I just wanted to point out that we have Coconut Key Lime Cookies on our website right now, and that soft peanut butter cookies will be here soon, so those cravings may soon be quenched, for some of you at least.
Coming Soon: Wheat-Free Brownies
For the past couple of months we’ve been working in Allison’s test kitchen to perfect wheat-free baked goods. Our dream would be to eventually transition all of our vegan brownies and cookies to wheat-free versions. However, before we undergo the long process of reformulating each one of our recipes, we want to make sure that wheat-free vegan baked goods are important to you.
Question: Assuming there is no taste difference between our whole wheat and wheat-free vegan brownies, would you be more inclined to buy the wheat-free ones? Answer or post your own question here on our blog, for a chance to win a sample and give us your taste-test opinion of our new wheat-free brownies as soon as they become available.
Update from Allison’s Test Kitchen
In the Allison’s Gourmet Test Kitchen today we had fun testing a gluten free version of our vegan brownies. 
The best part about doing recipe tests is that we get to eat whatever we make and then figure out how it could be better. We’re always trying to improve our products. The brownies today didn’t turn out quite perfectly, but pretty close; we’ll keep trying. Stay tuned… if we’re able to get these tests to come out right we might be offering really awesome gluten free vegan brownies on our website at some point in the future! Let us know here, on our blog, if gluten free baked goods are something that would interest you.
Thanks for a Fantastic 13 Years!
Allison’s Gourmet started life as a tiny vegan bakery on Vashon Island, WA. Originally we baked only cookies in a variety of flavors which quickly became a much-in-demand commodity on the Island and across the country. The success of Allison’s 
Cookies, as the business was called then, encouraged us to expand the business to include brownies as well. Today, thirteen years later and now located in Northern California, we are a complete vegan bakery and confectionary boutique offering a wide variety of confections along with fair-trade tea, coffee and drinking chocolate, as well as our signature cookies and brownies. If you’re a customer of ours or are thinking about becoming one, we’d like to say “Thanks” for helping make this small business a great success!
Sneak Peak: Brownie Flavors
We’re famous for our organic brownies, and for all you fans out there, here’s a sneak preview of the delectable
flavors we’ll be offering in the coming months: February is gorgeous Cherry Chocolate Brownies just in time for Valentine’s Day. For those of you who like your chocolate truly unadulterated, March’s flavor will be Original. In April we’ll be offering Amaretto Almond Brownies, an exquisite fusion of nutty, toasted almonds, sweet amaretto, and rich dark chocolate. Finally, for the ultimate chocolate experience, we’ll have Double Chocolate Brownies in May, so you can give your Mom some awesome organic brownies for Mother’s Day. Enjoy!
Storing your Cookies and Brownies
We often get questions from customers on how to store their vegan cookies and vegan brownies. Here’s a quick how-to:
Our vegan cookies can be stored in your cookie jar (any airtight container or their original packaging) for 
up to one week. They can also be frozen, in the same container or packaging, for up to three months. When you’re ready to eat them, simply thaw your cookies at room temperature or warm them quickly in a toaster oven. This works especially well with our chocolate chip cookie flavors for that hot-from-the-oven, melted chocolate experience.
Our vegan brownies can also be stored in their original packaging for up to one week. Or, cut them into your desired piece sizes and freeze them in their original packaging or other airtight container for up to three months. Brownies can be thawed at room temperature or warmed briefly in a toaster oven.