Minton Cookies

So distracted by the yumminess I focussed on my jeans.... :)

It seems like dairy is off the cards again - her skin got worse and now I'm off it, it's perfect again. At least I can console myself with Leda's Minton Cookies - think Mint Slice but allergen free. Yum!

Sorbet Treat

Sorbet is a winner for dairy free desserts and Weis now make dairy free Sorbet Bars. Before they only had their cream topped ones but now there are two options.

Our friends bought these for Miss 3 and I to have instead of the dairy dessert everyone else had and we thought they were delicious.

Missing chocolate no more

I am a lover of chocolate. When I am on a dairy/gluten/egg free diet while breastfeeding I miss my chocolate. I don't particularly love lollies/candy and they don't particularly hit the spot after dinner. Also a lot of the soft lollies (like snakes/jelly babies etc) have wheat starch in them. So, when I saw this at the supermarket I grabbed it - mint chocolate is my favourite as well! This is delicious! You can slightly taste the "soy-ness" of the chocolate but the mint helps cover it well while not being overbearing (another brand of allergen-free mint chocolate tends to be a bit crazy on the mint). I now feel I can keep up the dairy-free part of the diet quite easily with this as a treat every now and then. All I have to do is make sure I don't eat it all at once...

More Easter Chocolate!

image from here

After ordering my daughter's Easter Eggs online the other week, I went shopping for our eggs at Darrell Lea. I had been chatting to a friend who was planning to buy Australian made eggs this year and finding it difficult to actually find many. Most of the supermarkets etc don't have many made in Australia and if they are, the ingredients are often imported. We talked about Darrell Lea as an option, so I decided to buy our Easter chocolates there.

I had a good look around the store trying to work out what to buy and found that they have a dairy/nut/gluten free range (and egg free of course - eggs don't normally get used in regular chocolate). I decided to buy a pack of these Easter Bunnies since we are going to a park event soon that will involve an egg hunt and I want to have enough substitutes for her. At only $8.69 for 12, that's pretty great. Plus being individually wrapped really helps - I can keep one in my handbag just in case and I gave one to preschool in case someone was going to give out eggs etc. They also aren't that 'mini' but more generous. So that's pretty cool.

It's a shame there were no actual eggs (I find bunnies a bit tricky to help kids get the real meaning of Easter. We can talk about new life with eggs, but rabbits...?), but these and a larger rice crackle bunny are still great to be able to get without shopping online and to know you are buying Australian-made.

Oh and my daughter has already tried one (Mummy caved! Rare but true!) and loved it.

Product Deletions

Here is an excerpt from Allergy Train's latest newsletter about product deletions. I have previously recommended the Millet Rings and Mrs Robens Tortilla mix so it's a bit sad that they won't be produced anymore.

"Product Deletions

There are a couple of products that have disappeared in the last few months and i just wanted to let you know what has happened to them. 

Eskal Marshmellows - Unfortunately our supplier had the wrong shipment of marshmellows arrive. They received pink and white instead of plain white. We do not yet have a time frame on when these will be back.  

Ecor Rice and Millet Rings - these have been deleted by the manufacturer and we can no longer get them. This is very sad news for many of our customers who's kids loved them for breakfast. If you hear about an alternative product that may be a suitable replacement for these, please let us know and we will do our best to get hold of them.  

Angel Foods Meringue and Marshmellow Mixes - these have been deleted and are no longer available. We have a few meringue mixes left, but no marshmellow.

    
Mrs Robens - The manufacturer closed it's doors last year and last we heard the potential buyer was still talking to their bank so it looks like these may not be back any time soon if at all, which is a real shame. We loved their tortilla and pie mixes at our place."

We have ordered our Easter Chocolate this year from The Cruelty Free Shop and our daughter will enjoy a Moo Free Easter Egg and some Bonvita Rice Milk Mini Half Eggs as we remember what Jesus did for us on the cross and how he's alive again. Happy Easter!

Online and allergen-free in WA

screen shot taken from here

 We have recently moved to Western Australia which means that a lot of the online stores I was buying from now have prohibitive shipping costs. So I googled where to buy allergy free foods in Perth and came across this website - Allergy Tots. They don't have a huge range of products but they do have what I am looking for - a dairy free Easter Egg for our little Miss. So I have emailed to reserve an egg for her and can now feel less guilty about shopping for Easter Eggs for us too! Now to locate some mini Easter Eggs like what we had last year.

Absolute winner of a chocolate cake

Photo from here

I bought this cake mix in order to make little muffins for my daughter to take to her preschool for them to freeze for whenever someone has a birthday and she can't eat what is provided. I make a smaller cake with what was left over. I sprinkled pure icing sugar over the top instead of making an icing.
It was delicious! We all loved it and it was so moist and yummy that it was like eating a normal chocolate cake!

Here is their website. It is pretty easily available from certain large supermarkets.

We made the egg free option with No Egg rather than what was suggested but otherwise made it according to the instructions.

We are going to make it again for my daughter's 3rd birthday! I can't believe it is less than a month away.

A couple of products we are enjoying

Potentially the tastiest cupcake we've made.

Icing and Sprinkles certainly make it more exciting!

Just like Cheerios! Well, almost.

We purchased these from Allergy Train's website. Eggs are suggested for the cupcake mix but we just used the equivalent of No Egg.

Guest recipe: Muesli (Granola) Bars

If only I'd waited while it cooled - it was still yummy

It's been a while since we've had a guest recipe but here's another from my good friend. Her children also had to avoid soy as well. Muesli bars are often a source of nuts or traces of nuts and they are unbelievably expensive too! Here's one you can make at home that everyone will enjoy.

180g Nuttelex (dairy free spread)
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup each of dried apricots and dates – chopped
1/2 cup plain GF flour
1/3 cup pepitas
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
1 egg equivalent of no-egg (Egg substitute)

Place Nuttelex and sugar into a small saucepan and stir over a low to medium heat until Nuttelex has melted and the sugar has dissolved, set aside to cool slightly. In a large bowl, mix oats, apricots, dates, flour, pepitas and sunflower seeds. Make a well in the center of the dry mix and add the cooled butter mixture, egg and vanilla.

Stir until well combined. Spread evenly into an 18x28 greased tray and press down firmly, bake for 25-30mins at 180 degrees or until golden brown. Then allow to cool and slice into fingers.

We didn't have pepitas so added puffed amaranth instead. We also halved the recipe so it didn't fill the tray but it still worked. I reduced the amount of apricots and added in sultanas instead because we try to avoid sulfites. I was a bit keen and took the slice out before it cooled and it all fell apart so I encourage you to be patient - I think it will cut better if you wait! :)

Vanilla - a flavour saviour

In general, allergen free foods don't taste anywhere near as nice as 'normal' foods. It has been hard to work out how to make things more enjoyable. Here is one tip - use vanilla in baking. Most of the recipes that I've liked when I've baked allergen free have had vanilla essence or vanilla beans in them. It's a pantry essential.
Here's a few recipes that I use vanilla flavouring for -
Sultana and Oat Cookies
Vanilla Bean Biscuits
Brownies
Berry Muffins
Wacky Cake
Coconut Vanilla Icing

Sultana and Oat Cookies

I think these are the best allergen-free cookie I have made so far. Crunchy but slightly soft inside. Yum!
I adapted this recipe from Taste.com.au.

The amount below made 14 cookies. You can easily double the mixture:

65g dairy free spread
1/4 cup caster sugar and brown sugar mixed together (about half and half)
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
Equivalent of 1 egg using No Egg
1 cup gluten free self raising flour
1/2 tbsp soy milk
1/3 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup sultanas
another 1/2 tbsp soy milk

Preheat oven to 180C.
Add sugars and vanilla essence to the dairy free spread and mix with electric mixer until creamed. Add egg replacer and mix until well combined (takes a little bit of time).
Sift in flour, add the first bit of soy milk and stir until combined well.
And in oats, sultanas and the rest of the milk and combine.
Roll into balls, place on baking paper on a baking tray and then press down with your fingers or fork.
Bake in middle of oven for ~17 mins or until golden. Mine took 17mins :)

Banana Muffins

I know they are expensive, but when you have kids with allergies, you just have to bite the bullet to ensure your children eat well and are full and healthy. So after a short hiatus, my common sense, and a desire to support the Queensland farmers, means we are back on bananas, although slightly less often than normal.

I make this healthy tasty (normal flour/milk) muffin all the time for my son. He loves them. Yesterday I gave them a go with gluten free flour and soy milk. Even I thought they tasted yummy and I can't stand banana (and don't particularly like GF flour either...!).

Here's the GF recipe:

Rice bran oil for greasing
2 overripe bananas (I had to put them aside especially!)
2 tbsp Honey
1 1/2 tbsp Rice Bran Oil
3/4 cup soy milk
1 1/2 cup self raising gluten free flour
1 tbsp psyllium husk

Preheat oven to 200C. Grease 9 muffin pans in a muffin tray with oil.
Mash bananas in a bowl with a fork. Add oil, honey and milk and mix well. Tip: if you do oil first and have a squeezey honey (ie don't need to scoop into honey) the tablespoon you use will be oily and the honey will slip out easily!
Add the flours and mix together quickly with a spoon. Don't overmix - lumpiness is fine in a muffin mix.

Divide mixture into muffins pans and bake for 20mins or until skewer comes out clean.

The muffins freeze well.

Ice Cream Cones

We recently instituted Friday night ice-cream after dinner. The kids are super excited about it and often try to work out if it is Friday yet. Miss 2 can have soy ice-cream and we are currently using So Good's Chocolate ice-cream. I was at a specialty shop and happened on some gluten-free ice cream cones by Eskal and so I snapped them up. Both kids really enjoyed having them and we saved washing up 2 more bowls :)

There's lots more gluten free products by Eskal here - we have enjoyed the Deli Crackers before but haven't seen many of the other products in regular stores. I think some aren't dairy free so make sure you check.

Vanilla bean biscuits

I adapted this recipe from The Australian Women's Weekly Allergy-free Cooking for Kids book.

125g Nuttelex
1/2 cup Gluten Free Icing Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Bean Paste (or 1 vanilla bean)
1 1/4 cups plaing GF flour

Place Nuttelex in a bowl and sift icing sugar into it. Put vanilla bean paste (or seeds) into the bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in siften flour in two batches (just not all at once really).

Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth. Shape the dough into a log (diameter as big as you want the biscuits to be). Wrap in clingwrap and put in the fridge for at least 30mins.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line baking tray with baking paper.

Cut log into ~1cm slices. Place slices on trays about 2cm apart. Bake for about 12mins or until they get a little golden. Cool on the trays.

And as for the recipe book itself. Now that I own it and have looked through it, it's only ok. Unfortunately they separate the allergy free recipes - so it would help if your child was only allergic to one of the egg, dairy or gluten. But for my girl needing to miss all three, I still have to do almost as much substitution as a normal cook book. Lots of great kid food ideas though.

Chocolate muffins

My muffins, or cupcakes, as my 3 y.o. son told me they were!

I want to link you up to a fabulous website - Literary Viands. It has yummy recipes for sweet treats and good ideas about substitutes for different foods. I made the chocolate muffin recipe and it was great. I susbtituted for the egg using No Egg and I used soy milk and there were no problems. They looked really yummy too!

An Easter Treat

The chocolate eggs I mentioned last month have been a hit - Bonvita Rice Milk Chocolate Half Eggs. They are fairtrade as well and a good size. My daughter loved being able to get a chocolate egg each day like her brother as we read through part of the Easter story on the 12 days before Easter. I bought these eggs online at The Cruelty Free Shop. There's quite a lot there that I'd love to try - soy condensed milk, dairy/egg free mayonnaise to name a couple.

Easter time

Photo from here

As we get ready to remember Jesus' death and resurrection at Easter time, it becomes all too obvious that my daughter will miss out on the sweet treats that Easter tends to bring with it. We normally prepare for Easter using Resurrection Eggs with the kids and this year my daughter will be old enough to sit and listen to the short bible readings. Last year we gave my son a mini chocolate egg as he sat and listened so this year he is looking forward to the same. I think that sultanas might be the way to go with my daughter since I don't think she will be that keen on faux-chocolate. Still, just in case, I have found some eggs that are made with rice milk and are even fair-trade so I will blog about them when they arrive and we've tried one.

In the mean time she will be eating Choices' Hot Cross Buns to celebrate Easter. Yummo!

Vanilla Cookies

We made vanilla cookies from Friendly Food Cookbook last week. The kids enjoyed using the animal cookie cutters but ended up eating the 'round' cookies first!

I think the book is a very good purchase if you children have food chemical intolerances but we have had some good recipes for food allergies as well. It's just a bit more restricted than what my kids need to be.

I've made their marshmallow bithday cake recipe for my daughter's 2nd birthday today. Will post a pic and review next week. Can't quite believe 2 years have gone past already! Hopefully it also means we are closer to her allergies disappearing - can't wait!

Apple Pie - featuring Rowie's Shortcrust Pastry

The Pastry Mix with my ceramic blind baking balls

The finished product

I have had Rowie's Shortcrust Pastry Mix in the cupboard for a long time now and finally got up the motivation to try a pie. The pastry was easy to make - you need dairy-free spread and No Egg (although they say you don't need to use it, just add extra butter), but after rolling it out I found it difficult to get into the pie dish. Maybe I let it get too warm but I solved it by turning the dish onto the pastry and then turning it up the right way. Then for the top I rolled it on baking paper to help with the flip - still got a bit of breakage though.


Here's the recipe:
1 box Rowie's Sweet Shortcrust Pastry Mix
Dairy free spread
No Egg (optional)

For Filling:
1 can sliced apples (or you could do your own and soften them by boiling)
1 tbsp caster sugar
1/4 -1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix up and prepare pastry according to instructions (it includes blind baking the base).
Mix up filling ingredients and put into pie dish once pastry has cooled a little.
Cover with other half of pastry mix. Brush with dairy free milk or No Egg
Bake until golden.
Enjoy.

It's not bad for a gluten free option - certainly doesn't beat my Nan's apple pie but it's a good option.

Yoghurt

 photo from here

Soy yoghurt is an essential part of my daughter's calcium intake. She has it every night, as long as she has eaten enough of her dinner (vegetables specifically - she's such a carnivore!) because, apart from milk, it's her only big calcium product in her diet. Click here for other calcium ideas.

We currently use Soy Life Yoghurt, either vanilla or blueberry. You can get mango/apricot but she didn't like it. They come in 2 packs and tend to last us 4 nights. A tub is 26% of Recommended Daily Intake for Calcium. The other option is Kingland Yoghurts (not a great website unfortunately) that come in a 4 pack. They are good but not as economical for us at this stage.