Bethenny
Bakes
By
Gabriella
Gershenson
Once
upon
a time,
it was
hard
to eat
healthy
and not
be considered
a freak. "Your
food smells" are
words
that
I heard
at least
twice
a week
when
I would
eat my
good-for-you
lunches
beside
unforgiving
elementary
school
classmates.
Times
have
somewhat
changed:
Eating
well
has become
an accepted
way to
live,
and a
greater
variety
of healthy
products
have
made
it possible
to do
so without
attracting
too much
unwanted
attention.
"I get a lot of emails from moms with kids who have food intolerances," reports
Bethenny Frankel, owner of Manhattan-based healthy cookie company Bethenny
Bakes, over an iced tea at her neighborhood vegan joint, the Candle Café. "The
kids look at the cookie and they love it. The other kids don’t
look
at them
and see
that
they
have
the sad
little
healthy
treat."
No dairy. No
eggs. No wheat.
Low fat. Inside
their clear
plastic packets,
these individually
wrapped, saucer-sized
snacks are
pretty much
dead ringers
for their fat-
and sugar-laden
counterparts.
But how good
can a cookie
lacking in
all of those
ingredients
be?
Surprisingly,
pretty
good.
While
there
is no
substitute
for fat,
these
biscuits
satisfy
the sugar
craving,
and though
their
staple
ingredients
are oat
flour,
applesauce,
banana
and evaporated
cane
juice,
they
manage
to avoid
that "healthy" flavor
that ruins
many other
natural treats.
(That "healthy" flavor,
known widely
from a query
such as, "Does
it taste good,
or does it
taste healthy?" is
likely
due to
the barley
and rice
flours
or the
brown
rice
syrup,
all of
which
figures
prominently
in many
mass-produced,
naturally
baked
goods.)
Frankel’s
chocolate chip
cookies are
astoundingly
chewy, and
though the
peanut butter
chocolate chip
ones can’t
seem to hold
themselves
together, they
make up for
it in stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth
denseness;
the latter
are also the
most filling.
Frankel’s
favorite
is the
fudge
chocolate
chip,
whose
deep,
dark
hue and
prodigious
use of
cocoa
allows
you to
suspend
your
disbelief
and pretend
that
you are,
in fact,
eating
something
that
is bad
for you.
The upside
to the fat
and sugar tradeoff
is the aftereffects,
or lack thereof.
Because the
cookies are
made of whole
(i.e. unrefined)
ingredients,
one is less
likely to crash
and burn after
a brief-lived
sugar high.
Still,
there
are some
cheap
thrills
to be
found
in Frankel’s
cookies. A
nice caricature
of the entrepreneur
herself–lean-legged
and busty with
long brown
hair, a short-short
skirt and a
toothy smile–adorns
her label.
The real Bethenny
Frankel is
not quite as
buxom as her
illustrated
self and blushes
when told that’s
she’s
actually
much
prettier
in person.
"It’s not like I’m fat," she demurs, running her fingers through
her hair. "I want people to know that I’m
a thin
girl
who eats
these
cookies
every
day."
