MEWS free Raisin Cookies

Following a plea from a friend who was seeking a reliable recipe for raisin cookies that were milk, egg, wheat and soy free, I spent this morning playing with ingredients to devise a recipe.

I'm quite pleased with the result, it's certainly delicious warm from the oven - but the cookies are more chewy in texture than the crumbly result i was hoping for. For the second batch I added some pear puree (this could easily have been banana for a similar result) which helped soften the biscuit texture. I used egg replacer today for an egg free cookie, but an egg - if allowed - might make these crumblier and more like regular cookies.

Makes 6
Dairy free, wheat free, gluten free, corn free, egg free, soya free

Ingredients

• 55g/2 oz margarine - I used Stork hard block margarine, softened first.
• 55g/2 oz caster sugar - you could try soft brown sugar for a "richer" taste
• 110g/4oz SR free from flour (I used our Juvela prescription flour but often use Dove's Farm)
• 1 tsp baking powder if the above flour is not self raising
• 1 teaspoon egg replacer made up as instructed
• 100g pear puree - if using a softer margarine reduce to 75g)
• 60g/2-3 oz raisins
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 

 Method

• Preheat oven to 180C
• Use a non-stick baking tray or line a tray with baking paper
• Beat together sugar and margarine
• Fold in the flour, baking powder (if using) and spices
• Stir in the puree, add the raisins and combine.
• Mix in the egg replacer as per instructions
• Once the mixture is mixed well it will look like the first picture below.
• Using a table spoon, spoon out the mixture onto the tray in cookie shaped areas, taking care not to place them too close together.
• Bake in the centre of the oven for 15-18 mins
• Allow to cool.

Tips 

• You can make double quantity but these may not keep well. 
• There is no reason they cannot be frozen since they are more like cakes than biscuits - but I have yet to try doing so.
• If you can use an egg instead of replacing it, beat it in after beating the sugar and margarine together, then fold in the flour.

I'll let you know the kids' verdict later!

Vegan Date Muffins - MEWS free!

My wonderful sister in law sent me the inspiration for these muffins, and since I am stuck in waiting for a washing machine engineer who cannot tell the time I decided to get backing.

I'm a bit of a novice baking egg free still, and I suspect my efforts are nothing like as good as hers, but this is her adapted recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow's "It's All Good" Recipe Book. 

Ingredients

• 2 cups Gluten free flour of your choice
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• a pinch of sea salt
• 2 overripe bananas (great raising agent!)
• 1/2 cup virgin olive oil
• 2/3 cup maple syrup
• 2/3 cup almond milk or your choice of substitute
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup pitted dates or dried fruit of your choice
• walnuts/seeds/your choice or nothing to sprinkle on the surface before baking

Variation - You could combine a mixture of flours, and also replace a scoop with protein powder. My sister splits the 2 cups of flour into four quarter cups of brown rice flour, millet, quinoa, and buckwheat.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180C 400F
• Combine all dry ingredients in bowl 1
• Combine all other wet ingredients in bowl 2.
• Thoroughly combine the contents of both bowls and spoon into (about 16) papercases.

Tip - toss the dried fruit in a spoonful of flour first, this prevents them sinking to the bottom of the muffins when cooking.

My efforts were good, but didn't rise quite as well. I suspect my mixture was a little dry - it needs to be a soft, dropping consistency. These are delicious though, and I can think of plenty of variations! Great for packed lunches too!

Raspberry Muffins

This is a variation on the Blueberry and Lemon Muffin recipe published a few months back. We have some late Autumn Raspberry canes in our garden which after all the mild weather are still producing fruit, so I have been really lucky this year.

Dairy free, soya free (depending on flour used), wheat free, gluten free, could be egg free

These are delicious iced but are equally good "plain". I guarantee these won't last long either, best fresh from the oven - I think I will be making double quantity next time!

Ingredients 

• 100 g Sunflower Oil (NOT olive oil, this is too heavy)
• 100 g Caster Sugar 
• 1 Egg (or equivalent egg replacer, used above)
• 150 g Self Raising Dove's Farm Gluten Free Flour 
• 1 tsp Xanthan Gum (if tolerated)
• 125 g Fresh or frozen raspberries 
• 6 Paper Muffin Cases (or 10 smaller cupcake cases)
• small quantity of icing sugar (optional)

Method

• Beat together the oil, sugar and egg well until batter starts to thicken. 
• Add the lemon juice
• Mix in the flour. 
• Mix in the raspberries. 
• Spoon into paper muffin cases standing on a baking tray. 
• Bake in a pre heated oven for 20/25 minutes.
• Mix up the icing sugar and drizzle on top once cool - if desired.

Tip - All muffins cook more evenly in good quality bakeware, and it will last for years so it's worth investing in some! These blueberry muffins are in a solid Denby baking tray. 

I'm linking up with the Denby "Cake Off" Competition! 

Coconut Loaf

This delicious cake recipe was supplied by Michelle, from FABED, the only charity supporting families affected by Eosinophilic Disorders. You can read more about EGID here.

This recipe is MEWS free, gluten free, egg free and depending on your choice of flour, corn free, potato free too. I think it's also evidence for people like me who can bake with eggs that they are NOT required for a lovely, light texture and a large cake that rises!

Ingredients

• 300 g free from flour
• 2tsp free from baking powder
• 1tsp ground cinnamon
• 4tbsp flaxseed or linseed
• 225g golden caster sugar
• 150g desiccated coconut
• 350ml coconut milk
• 50 ml sunflower oil
• 900g loaf tin

Method

• Pre heat oven to 180 and lightly grease the loaf tin
• Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon in a large bowl, add ground flaxseed, caster sugar and coconut and mix together. 
• Pour over the coconut milk and sunflower oil stir until you have a batter.
• Tip into tin and bake in the oven for 45-50mins until it is slightly risen and golden.
• Leave to cool and turn on to a rack.

Serve warm or cold!

Biscuit Bake-Off!

Following on from my summer post on Independence, I have been involving the kids in catering for their exclusion diets and giving them more say to try and boost their food confidence and take some ownership of their diets.

Having a chronic medical condition can be daunting and scary for anyone, but for children it can be overwhelming. For my youngest two on strict exclusion diets (and the many others I know on similar or worse) and with many eating-related symptoms they often need to feel they have some control in their lives. Some like my youngest son refuse to eat, some comfort eat, some eat non-foods, some just bottle up their feelings and suffer in silence. But food can STILL be fun, it's just a lot harder to achieve and needs a bit more inspiration.

With so many "can't have"s it's vital they feel they have some say in what they CAN have, so we decided to tackle an essential part of children's diet - BISCUITS lol !!

Turkey Burgers

Turkey is a meat well tolerated by many. This recipe is a few food recipe, and turkey works well in burgers as it sticks together nicely without binding agents like egg.

Ingredients

• Minced Turkey 
• Chopped onion 
• Seasoning 
• Chopped fresh parsley if desired. 
• Rice flour 
• Any safe Oil 

Method

• Fry chopped onion in a little safe oil. 
• Take off heat when soft and mix with mince. 
• Season mince and add chopped parsley. 
• Make into patties and roll in rice flour. 
• Shallow fry for 3 or 4 minutes in a frying pan with safe oil. 

These are great warm, freeze well and are a hit cold in the lunch box. They are also nice with sweet corn added before frying.

Honeycomb Recipe

A lovely treat for the festive season, with only 3 ingredients. Many thanks to Michelle from FABED for this recipe!

Ingredients

• 100g caster sugar,
• 4 15ml golden syrup,
• 1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

Method

• Put the sugar and syrup in a pan stir and mix together, then put on the heat.
• YOU MUST NOT STIR WHILST ON THE HEAT
• Place pan on heat and let the mixture melt, it will turn to gooey mixture and then to a bubbling mass the colour of maple syrup. This takes about 3 mins to get to this point.
• Once at this point take off the heat and whisk in the bicarbonate of soda and watch the syrup turn into a golden colour.
• Turn out immediately onto reusable baking parchment. Leave until set then bash it so that it splinters.

Our first Guest Post!

Freefromforkids  

Background:-
In a moment of frustration in 2012, I totted up how many hours a week I was spending trying to get food for my sons – I was going round 3 supermarkets, a health food shop and searching for things online every week!

I discovered I spent 3 times longer than my friends and spent twice as much money! I didn’t dare tot up the hours I was spending baking foods that I couldn’t find in the shops!

Having children with food allergies and gut problems is hard enough and I felt strongly that parents shouldn’t have to struggle to find safe foods and that children shouldn’t have to go without food that ‘looked’ like their friends food.

Our Aim:-
We launched Freefromforkids with this aim in mind and we have been adding at least 2 products a month since it launched. We hope that in time there will be something for every diet and for every occasion.


Recognition:-
This year we entered the Foods You Can Peoples Choice Awards and we were thrilled to win 1st place in the Small Online Freefrom Food Supermarket category!

We have received some lovely feedback, particularly in the run up to Christmas, with many families telling us that this year will be the first time their child has had an advent calendar or a chocolate santa. Even if we can only help a few families like our own, then all the hard work will have been worthwhile!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last year!
Suzanne (Freefromforkids)

PIZZA!!!!

*HURRAH* for high street restaurants offering free from menu choices.

We have been testing a few this year, very cautiously!

ASK

Ask in Ipswich were extremely helpful. They explained that recently their chips have changed and are now coated to make them crispier. This makes them unsuitable for anyone with a wheat or gluten allergy. They always stock small new potatoes in their freezer, coated in a safe pepper/salt/oil combination, part cooked and ready for frying. They also grilled some chicken in the same combination for my two gourmets and served them with a child friendly salad. A real hit!

Sorbet satisfied our allergy requirements too, an excellent meal but a long wait as their online allergen list had not been updated.

PIZZA EXPRESS

Pizza Express have just launched their Gluten Free menu. As a family we love Pizza Express, the menu is pretty versatile, it's quick for the kids and they take Tesco Clubcard vouchers!!  They have a fully comprehensive allergen list but read carefully. Many items are absolutely fine but you might think they are not because the entire dish is listed as containing a known allergen. Meat is sourced locally so check that ham doesn't contain lactose for example.

We were fine - on the children's menu my twins couldn't have the dough balls so enjoyed an extra large salad. One chose a gluten free pizza, no cheese with chicken and ham on top, the other the same but with tuna. That ticked the no MWS and Gluten boxes for us, also Egg free as Archie is on minimal egg.  The gluten free pizzas in the table all say they contain dairy and soya, this is because they ahve CHEESE on. You can be creative, like us and skip the cheese and add alternatives! The pizza base was thin and crispy but a definite improvement on the supermarket bases we have tried to date.

LEGOLAND, Windsor

The Park restaurants and cafes are almost all a big no-no as Legoland now coat their chips and cross contaminate much of their food. However, The Castle Rotisserie (where the large Dragon rollercoaster is) suited us fine. Jacket potatoes with no butter, chicken or baked beans (Heinz which have no wheat flour in) were fine.

The hotel could not have been more helpful. I called the day before then spoke with the chef just before each meal. He cooked safe chips especially for the twins, and there were plenty of meat and veg options. My two ate extremely well! Breakfast was the trickiest but they always have gluten free bread to toast with jams, no spread alternative though. Do ask to have the bread toasted in the kitchen though not on the industrial size "conveyor belt" toaster in the restaurant.

Disclaimer : Obviously YOU know your child's level of sensitivity. Some children will react with microscopic amounts of allergen present. We do NOT avoid food which says "May contain traces of ...." and also do NOT avoid Soya Lecithin as we have always been told that it is a highly purified oil, with no protein present and it is usually the protein people react to. This is NOT the same for everyone.

Next Post - Coffee Shops with safe snacks!

Incredibly simple two food birthday cake!

A friend has a son who is mostly tube fed, but is allowed rice and is ok with a small amount of sugar. She couldn't let his birthday pass without some kind of cake, but on two foods that's pretty tough....

However, she created this beautiful little cake from large rice cakes, it worked a treat and cut neatly too - no crumbling.

It is rice cakes layered with icing from icing sugar and water, and decorated with jelly tots. 

It's that simple!

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best!

MEWS free Gingerbread Men

A lovely easy biscuit recipe from a friend!

Recipe is so easy, a blend of various recipes so things like xanthum gum may need tweaking and the amount of flour may need to be increased. This will make about 30 gingerbread men or 4 billion gingerbread dinosaurs. My opinion is more ginger and nutmeg is best which is why the quantities are quite high.

Ingredients

• 140g pure sunflower spread
• 100g dark muscovado sugar
• 3 tbsp golden syrup
• 350g Doves gluten free plain flour
• 1 tsp gluten free bicarbonate of soda
• 1.5 tsp Xanthum gum
• 3 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cloves

Method

• Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment. Melt butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix flour, soda, spices and xanthum gum in a bowl. Stir in the butter mix to make a stiff-ish dough. 
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• Wait until cool enough to handle, then roll out dough to about 5mm thick. Stamp out gingerbread men, re-rolling and pressing the trimmings back together and rolling again. Lift onto baking sheets.
• 
  
• Bake for 10-12 mins until golden.
• 
  
• Cool 10 mins on the sheets, then lift onto cooling racks. Then continue until all done. Remember that these will spread a little in the oven so keep a bit of a space between them.  

Keeps for about a week in an airtight tin, dough should freeze if made in quantity.