Christmas Lollies!

So, following on from Emma Cawood's amazing efforts making single ingredient lollies... I decided these would be perfect for the twins' school bazaar next week. After much psyching myself up.... I set everything out and got started...

Ingredients

• 2 cups white caster sugar
• 2/3 cup light corn syrup - if you have this your lollies will stay fairly clear. I desperately wanted to source some, but so far no luck. After reading some excellent info here I decided to use Agave nectar instead. It worked fine, but the lollies were toffee coloured instead.

Equipment

• Lolly sticks
• silicone baking sheet
• sugar thermometer
• non stick pan
• bowl of cold water large enough to submerge lower half of the pan.

Tip:- Add flavouring if desired - mint or vanilla, but your lollies will darken unless you have clear flavouring! 

Method

• Heat the sugar and syrup in the pan and using a sugar thermometer heat and stir until it is boiling at 310F
• Remove from the heat. Submerge the lower half of the pan in the cold water bowl for 10-15 seconds, keep swirling/stirring.
• As it thickens up pour the liquid sugar on top of the lolly sticks in 1 inch circles. (If it spreads too much, it's still too hot)
• Quickly add sprinkles etc before the surface cools!

NB lots of sprinkles contain major allergens. I used these which do have egg white and soya lecithin in. We are lucky and these are ok for us, soya protein would not have been.

I honestly don't think I have *ever* been so nervous about a recipe before. I had never made anything like this - but it was surprisingly easy and I will be far more confident next time! Clearing up took a while, perhaps because I knocked over the sprinkles.....

Clearing up Tips

1. DON'T panic!!! You have't ruined your pan etc (unless and liquid sugar gets burned underneath.) as long as you have a large bowl of hot water to submerse the lower half in you an manage this really easily.
2. Once you have poured your lollies, the remaining sugar will be hardening and impossible to remove from the pan. Heat gently until it starts to move again, and literally POUR it into the cold water. It will set immediately, and your pan will have so little left in that the rest will easily dissolve in hot soapy water!

Single Ingredient Lollies

As promised, here is how to make #freefrom lollies, from the lovely Emma Cawood who is part of our Facebook Group. 

Emma describes so emotively the reality of catering for a child with few safe foods, and the lengths we mothers go to to ensure they don't miss out more than they have to.

Over to Emma:-

With the Christmas holidays fast approaching I could feel that feeling off doom overwhelming me once again. The dreaded season of parties and family get togethers, where every event seems to focus around food. If I'm being truthful I think T deals with it all much better than I do. He just takes it on the chin and accepts it for what it is. I'm the one that carries the burden and constantly questions whether this is having an impact on his childhood. Are his Christmas memories going to be ruined in someway because he never had a Candy Cane or Mince Pie? Because his selection boxes didn't contain chocolate will he somehow grow up unhinged? Ridiculous I know but it's the kind of thing that goes through my head on a regular basis.

So the day arrived that I thought I owed it to T to try and make a sweet of some sort out of his 6 safe foods. If I tried and failed at I would be able to hold my hands up and say at least I had given it my best shot. The good news is after a week of trawling books, the web and dismissing so many things due to too many ingredients I came upon a simple Sugar Lolly. The original recipe had more ingredients in it than T could tolerate so I omitted them all and went with pure sugar. Not the best option I know when you think of those little teeth and with my biggest boy I would have been hyperventilating at the sheer thought of it but these wouldn't be given more than once a week and as T gets no other sugar in his diet I took the bulls by the horns and went for it.

The first day I tried to make them I boiled the sugar in a solid bottomed pan on a low heat. It went through the various stages. Melted, grainy, back to powder again and then finally just as I was giving up hope it turned to a lovely golden caramel colour. I quickly poured over plastic cake pop sticks that I had laid out lovingly on plastic sheeting. However it soon turned into disaster. Without a mould the sugar didn't stay in neat round lollypop shapes, it ran everywhere. The pan began to boil and burn so when trying to remove the sugar from the pan I flicked it into my eye and nearly blinded myself. My husband arrived home to smoke, screams and chaos. Ok I thought! This isn't going to be as easy as it seems.

Day 2, I was prepared with goggles, a new bag of sugar and a positive attitude. I had ordered a chocolate lolly mould online and set my stall out properly. The sugar started to melt and go through its various stages again but this time I was ready for it. As soon as it turned a lovely amber colour I took it straight off the heat and poured into the moulds. Yay!!!! I had lollies. Safe, gorgeous lollies for my beautiful boy. Ok, not the easiest thing to make but if they bring a teeny bit of joy to his life then worth every ounce of effort, after all when you're 7 years old to be able to eat something similar to other children means everything and even more so at Christmas.

Emma has inspired me - we are supremely fortunate that corn syrup is not an issue so I might manage to make some without the moulds, all being well!

Facebook Group Recipe Round-up

The members of our Facebook group are soon going to put me out of a job.... we've had some inspirational cooking with very few ingredients showcased on there this week.


Here a just a few of them!





Chicken Pop Corn Kebabs

• Cooked chicken breast, cooked mashed sweet potato, dash of oil and a little water if needed. 
• Bind all ingredients together in a bowl with maize meal (polenta). 
• Season if allowed and then divide into balls and pop on a baking tray, keep checking and turning. (Not an exact science as to when done. Just check and check.)
• Once crispy and firm take out. I bought cake pop sticks and put 3 on each (like a kebab). 
• Eat hot and cold.

Gingerbread Reindeer

Using a slightly different recipe to mine - (from the Glutafin site) one member made her own gingerbread reindeer. It's really simple, you can read more here.

I love the glass cherries for the red noses!

Lollies - Coming Soon!!!

Last but not least, I take my hat off to the person who made lollies on sticks from sugar alone, and wrapped them to look like store bought lollies! A real treat. For children who can only eat homemade food, sometimes making something look less homemade is a treat. My Mum used to make most off my clothes when I was younger, and clothes with labels in generated a great deal of excitement!

Keep checking back/subscribe for more info on how to make these simple treats.

Free From "Mini Milk" Lollies

I was fortunate enough to "bump into" the lovely Nia from "Carrots and Maple Syrup" on Twitter via #AllergyHour. (Thursdays 8.30-9.30pm if you are interested!) Nia has worked with Julia from Alimentary Bites (Julia is a dietician) and Hailey from Allergy Adventures recently, so her profile is rising! Check out their substitutions sheet, it's really good.

Nia is amazing, a self taught cook she suffers from multiple allergies herself. That's a nightmare for anyone but for a young person just setting out into the world independently it's REALLY tough. Nia is the most INNOVATIVE baker/cook I have come across, she is 100% self taught and creates all her own recipes. 

Knowing that summer is coming, I asked her to create a recipe for The Recipe Resource. Knowing that it is a site mainly catering for children she came up with these delicious free from "Mini Milk" Lollies! 

Makes 10 - you can buy these little lolly makers everywhere, even in Poundland!

Ingredients

• 150 ml cream (millet, coconut, soya, almond, dairy, oat)
• 560 g yogurt (pea, soya, coconut, rice, greek)
• 3 1/2 tbsp sugar (honey or agave would do)
• 125 g pureed strawberries or cooled melted chocolate (such as Moo Free, Kinnerton, Plamil, Sweet William, Enjoy Life)

Method

So easy!

• Mix together in a bowl and pour into ice lolly moulds
• Freeze for 4 hours