Savoury Muffins (DF, WF, GF, EF, SF, NF)

Really delicious and super healthy! We like the chickpea (gram) flour option. Eat fresh, or freeze to defrost and eat later. Sadly egg free baked goods do not keep and go stale very quickly out of the freezer.

Ingredients - makes 14

Banana Muffins (with or without the nuts!) Can be MEWS free

I have long used my Mum's recipe for Banana Muffins, which you can find here. However I was keen to develop a recipe that was truer to a muffin mix but also used a variety of flours. I confess the reason for the latter was partly because my baking cupboard is overflowing with flours at present, but I'm trying to be braver in my cooking too.

I have a lovely little muffin and cupcake recipe book by Ann Nichol - listed here on GoodReads.

I used the "Streusel-Topped Banana Muffins" recipe as a starting point, and adapted.

Ingredients

• 5oz gluten free flour mix - I used 3oz Dove's Farm, 1oz coconut flour to allow more moisture to be absorbed into the recipe, and 1oz peanut flour for flavour and protein. OBVIOUSLY peanuts are a MASSIVE issue for many, so you can use any similar protein based flour instead, or substitute another oz of your usual GF flour.
• 1teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder
• 2 large ripe bananas (if smaller, reduce flour a little)
• 1 large egg
• 50mls sunflower oil (DO NOT use olive oil, it is too heavy for baking, same with coconut oil)
• 50mls your choice of milk substitute. I used rice milk.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/180C if fan/Gas Mark 6
• You will need 6-8 large muffin cases or 10 cupcake cases (better for children)
• Sift the flours, xanthan gum and baking powder together (worth doing with a mix of flours)
• Mash bananas well, make a well in centre of flour and add them to the bowl
• In another bowl, beat egg, oil and milk together **
• Add wet bowl to dry bowl and mix well
• Spoon into paper cases so they are approx two thirds full
• Bake for 20-25 mins until golden and a skewer/knife comes out clean

** Because banana is an excellent raising agent, and because coconut flour holds fluid in well, this is quite a good recipe to swap the egg for egg replacer to make MEWS free muffins.

Eat fresh from the oven, or freeze for later once completely cool. (If there are any left....!)

3 Ingredient Pineapple Cake

I couldn't believe it when someone share this recipe on the Facebook Recipe Resource wall. I mean, we've tested and adapted a couple of brilliant and really simple cake recipes, but this one tops the lot!! For those unfortunate enough to be allergic to pineapple, stewed brambly apples would work pretty well and I plan to test that soon.

This took a minute to whizz up, 50 minutes to bake and much less for the troops to demolish. There is NONE left. Can't be bad, eh?

Ingredients

• 2 cups your choice of self raising flour - I used Dove's Farm
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 440g (large) can of crushed pineapple - or blend a can of sliced pineapple like I did.

Method

• Blend the pineapple chunks or slices if required. KEEP all the juice, do NOT drain it off
• Combine all three ingredients well and transfer to a alb loaf tin
• Bake at 180C (170C in a fan oven) for 50 minutes.

That's IT. 

I doubt it would keep well, but to be honest there wasn't much need here!! One of the best egg free cakes I've come across.

Crunchy Millet Flapjack/Granola style Biscuits

Once again our Facebook Group has come up trumps and member Livy Dickinson has created a fab recipe for her daughter, who is on a few food diet.  Searching for something palatable, portable and safe she has come up with the following, a crunchy granola style bite (could be a bar) which is really tasty,

Ingredients

• 250g Millet flakes 
• 150g Coconut oil 
• 125g Brown sugar 
• 4/5 tbsp Golden syrup 
• (2 tbsp dried blueberries- optional) 

Method

•  Simply combine and either spread in a tin (as in picture) or in paper cases/greased cupcake wells
• Bake at 180C for approx 20mins @ 180. 

These are hard/ solid/ crunchy, not soft and squidgy like usual flapjacks. They're very like Nature Valley Crunch bars in texture, so not suitable for very young children.

Easter Biscuits

It's the Easter holidays - and it's blowing a gail, with the odd hailstorm thrown in for good measure. All my children want to do when at home is make things, so today we made our favourite shortbread biscuits and decorated them for Easter!

That was my first attempt... then the twins decided to have a go, and the bunnies multiplied, as bunnies are apt to do!

Happy Easter! And if your little ones want to know more about Easter, its traditions and get some art and craft ideas, pop over to see Dorothy of more fun!

http://dorothywhiskers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/easter-crafts.html

Free-From Chocolate Brownie Cake

Having held you all in suspense on our Facebook page since announcing an EGG FREE cake recipe was on the way...... here it is!!

I can't take much credit for this though, it really is a creation of my daughter's, who at 9 was rather cheesed off that she wasn't able to eat the gluten free brownies her older brother enjoys frequently and decided to do something about it!

We are really lucky and are allowed some egg here, which makes life much easier. But many are not able to eat egg so we are officially making an effort to include more egg free recipes.

I had read about eggless "crazy" cakes before, and we had a basic recipe for guidance. The were created during the "Great Depression" in 1930s America, when eggs and butter were hard to find and expensive.

Ingredients

(Adapted from an official "crazy cake recipe")

Dry ingredients

• 1 1/2 Cups of flour (we used Juvela Harvest White but any blended flour would do)
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder (We used Bournville for that brownie taste)
• 1 cup sugar (we used caster, the recipe said granulated but that tasted gritty)
• 1 tsp baking powder

Wet ingredients

• 1 tsp white vinegar (I only had wine vinegar as it's gluten free)
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 5 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup water

Method

This is really *so* easy, I was not involved at all, my 9 year old made this by herself.)

• Grease an 8" deep sandwich or square tin
• Measure out the dry ingredients in order
• Mix lightly and make three wells in them 
• Put the wet ingredients one in each well, the oil in the largest - like a face!  (2)
• Pour the water over the entire lot in the tin (3)
• Mix well! (4)
• Bake at 170C / 350F for 35 minutes, the middle should be slightly squidgey to avoid the outside getting too dry (that was the problem with our first effort) and once cooled it can be decorated if desired. 

When warm, it tastes just like chocolate brownies..... yum!!

Gingerbread Reindeer

A lovely easy biscuit recipe from a friend that you can decorate to make reindeer! This was a wonderful tip I saw doing the rounds on Social Media last year.

This recipe is so easy, it's 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/reindeer.

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.

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.

Decorate upside down as reindeer!

Tip: Remember that these will spread a little in the oven so keep a bit of a space between them.  
These keep for about a week in an airtight tin, dough should freeze if made in quantity.

Frank Bars - Review

Disclaimer - The Recipe Resource were sent five Frank Bars for the purpose of an independent review. The views expressed are entirely my own - or rather those of my fussy, hard to please taste-testers!

About the Frank Food Company

"FRANK bars are a deliciously indulgent snack bar made with 100% natural ingredients such as wholegrain oats, dates & dried plums and topped with a delicious dairy free Coconut Cream chocolate. FRANK bars are gluten, nut, & dairy free and are a source of protein, with each bar containing almost 4g of protein per 35g bar. FRANK bars also contain ENERGYSMART®, which is a patented, all-natural combination of carbohydrates from select fruits (apple, grape & pear) plus specially developed natural dextrins from grain which together provide longer-lasting energy. ENERGYSMART® is a registered trademark of Advanced Ingredients Inc. (USA)"


There are currently five Frank Bars available - Oat and Chocolate, Blueberry and Chocolate, Strawberry and Chocolate, Orange and Chocolate and plain Chocolate. They are more cocoa flavoured than "chocolate" and a wonderful chewy-but-not-too-sticky texture.

We were particularly keen to get hold of these because our current favourite bars contain cashew nuts. Whilst this is wonderful for my children's protein intake on their very restricted diet, they were not allowed in school because for some nut allergic children even cashew nuts are dangerous due to processing methods. Frank bars are nut free so this is not an issue.

Another major issue for us is soya avoidance. Too many foods replace dairy with soya and my twins - particularly our daughter are extremely sensitive to soya. The last accidental ingestion caused two days of considerable acute ill health and a month's recovery time.  Frank bars are soya free too!


Frank bars also have a sustained energy release so are ideal to carry in bags for energy dips. For us, this is more than a potential unpleasant energy lull, as we have low blood sugars to manage in one child and these can actively help as part of a balanced diet.

So - what did we think?

The twins loved all except (bizarrely?) the plain chocolate bar. Blueberry and Strawberry were a real hit, orange was "good" and the oat one "nice".  All round a massive thumbs up!

Our daughter really struggles with foods that are too sticky or chewy so these are fantastic. They are both quite suspicious of new foods, previously associating many foods with pain and discomfort so to spontaneously give a new food a positive endorsement is a huge compliment.

Which were their favourites?

As a parent I'm really pleased to have discovered Frank Bars. They certainly tick all my boxes and I'm delighted that Asda now stock them which makes it a little easier to source them - although I notice you can purchase directly from the Frank website. It's not often this little chap embraces a new food so enthusiastically - hats off to Frank!

Pizza - Using mixes or baking from scratch?

For years I have used the following Pizza base recipe which is free from – wheat, dairy, egg, soy and corn. It does mean cooking from scratch but I find it's by far the tastiest we've tried.

Prep Time - 15 minutes

Cook Time - 25 minutes

Ingredients 

• 1 Tablespoon dry yeast
• 2/3 cup brown rice flour 
• 1/2 cup potato flour/ tapioca flour 
• 2 teaspoons xanthan gum 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon Italian herb seasoning (optional)
• 2/3 cup warm rice milk (or your choice)
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon cider vinegar (optional)
• Extra rice flour for sprinkling

It's great - but there are no other options you can buy, premixed and infinitely tastier than the ready made bases which cost a fortune in the supermarket.

Alternatives

1. Isabel's Pizza Base Mix This has been recommended but Recipe Resource followers on Twitter as one of the best. BUT - and it's a MASSIVE "but" ... it contains milk powder. Which excludes us and many others I know. As a recipe for coeliacs it sounds great however, the same is true of the Glutafin mix.


2. If you receive Juvela mix on prescription, there is a recipe on their website here
   
   
3. Orgran have a multi mix you can use to make pizza bases, a little more straightforward than the Juvela recipe, and you can purchase their mix online from Goodness Direct, FreeFrom for Kids or Ocado.
   
   
4. BobsRedMill Gluten Free pizza base mix. This is one I have tried, it is free from most major allergens but again, there is a "but". It is not milled/produced in a certified nut free environment. The ingredients are in the picture below.

So there are alternatives, but we still like our original recipe! Here's how you do it:-

Method

• Preheat oven to 190 degrees . In medium mixer bowl using regular beaters (not dough hooks), blend the yeast, flours, xanthan gum, salt, and Italian seasoning on low speed. Add warm milk, sugar, oil, and vinegar. 

• Beat on high speed for 2 minutes. (If the mixer bounces around the bowl, the dough is too stiff. Add water if necessary, one tablespoon at a time, until dough does not resist beaters.) The dough will resemble soft bread dough. 

• Put mixture on a greased 12-inch pizza pan. Liberally sprinkle rice flour onto dough, then press dough into pan, continuing to sprinkle dough with flour to prevent sticking to your hands. Make edges thicker to hold the toppings. 

• Bake pizza crust for 10 minutes. Remove from oven. Top Pizza Crust with sauce and your preferred toppings. Bake for another 20 to 25 minutes or until top is nicely browned.

Suggestions for toppings:-

• Tomato sauce and fresh cherry tomatoes, sprinkled with Redwood Cheezly Dairy and Soya free cheese.
• Spinach with the above
• Vegusto Melty (if tolerated) cubed and added on the top to resemble a Pizza Express Pizza
• Shredded chicken and sweetcorn
• If you are allowed eggs, a poached egg and spinach are a great combination on top!

Thanks to members of our Facebook group for providing the photo and Twitter followers for excellent advice!

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!

Main Meals for Kids

I find my biggest challenge is providing a balanced week day menu for my children after school. Their school will not provide them with a hot lunch, so I make up a cold lunch daily for them both. Their older brother is "only" gluten free which is slightly easier, and his High School provide him with a nutritious hot meal every day which is a MASSIVE help to me.

Like many other children with food allergies, my twins have some swallowing issues. Reflux alone usually means "sticky" food is harder to swallow, and really dry food can stick at the back of the throat. This is because reflux often desensitises that area making the swallow reflex slightly delayed - usually not much of an issue but in persistent reflux it can become a problem.

Our daughter suffers particularly with this and has to sit upright, pace herself and is very good now (at age 8) in knowing what she can and cannot manage to eat without risking choking.

And, like almost ALL children, those with allergies will still have likes and dislikes, favourites and food they wouldn't touch with the proverbial bargepole. Lastly, children with food related disorders and health conditions almost always have an overly strong emotional relationship with food. It *really* matters to them, it is often a bigger focus than maybe it should be, and they care deeply about what they can and will eat. (And what they can't!) So catering for this group can be akin to stumbling blindly through a minefield!

It's therefore even less acceptable to fob them off with the same meal several days a week (unless there are other reasons for doing so, we did it when weaning our son from tube feeds so I would never condemn anyone!) and given their dietary restrictions, nutritional content is absolutely KEY. I recently wrote about the Free From Food industry and whilst it is fine to use ready meals occasionally, most are high in salt and sugar to add flavour. You simply cannot beat cooking from scratch -and it really isn't difficult.

So here is a sample week-day meal planner for primary aged children, which you can rotate as necessary. It relies on several staples which you can easily keep in your freezer and a couple of half days (or evenings) of batch cooking. I've tried to exclude recipes which have the main allergens in, and the majority are meals you can cook in advance and freeze if desired.

Cherry Scones

Free from Wheat, Gluten, Dairy, Soya

This was never intended to be a Blog post - indeed, I am so used to my futile attempts at creating a "free from" scone recipe that a) rises and b) stays moist that I only gave in and tried once more at the pleas of my scone loving 12 year old. He's only been gluten free a short while (under hospital instructions) and misses them terribly.

So, there was none of that "ok, this is a Blog post so let's get organised, take a photo etc" type of planning. Which if you listen to my husband is probably why it worked.... (in a Shrödinger's Cat if you observe it you change reality kind of way.)

So. Here you go, this is how I made them:-

"Free-From" Cake Pops

Having discovered that our Half Term was full of appointments I wanted to make the twins
something special for their birthday, but something I could make in advance.

So, I duly purchased a silicone cake pop mould and thought it would be easy. It wasn't! The sticks wouldn't hold even with melted chocolate to seal them in, the cake was too crumbly..... and I ended up making the usual birthday cakes at 11pm the night before.

I also decided I was never going to attempt cake pops again, until last week when I came across Emily Leary's Cake Pop recipe.

(I highly recommend her site, the "Recipe of the Week" is a regular link up with lots of new ideas, several of which I have adapted to make a "free from" version for ourselves.) 

Anyway, inspired once again I decided it was worth a second try. Without the mould....

Duck breasts with Pomegranate and Mint

A great Christmas recipe with lots of flavour!

Ideal if you are having a dinner party and need to provide a free from meal which looks stunning and so simple to cook, or if you have older children on exclusion diets.

Ingredients:-

4 duck breasts
200g rocket,
watercress and salad chard (Possibly chinese leaves?)
1 Pomegranate (on rotation)
1 small bunch or packet mint ( if the kids don't like mint you could use chives)

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 220/gas mark 7
Heat a flameproof, oven proof pan on the hob, and then sear the duck skin side down for a minute or so over the high heat. (Remove the skin if not tolerated)
Turn the duck breast over then place in oven for about 15 mins.
Remove the duck breasts from the oven and sit them on a carving board to rest.
Whilst the duck is resting line your meat plate with the salad leaves. Slice the duck breast very thinly on the diagonal and lay on the salad lined dish, pouring any meat juices over them as you go.
Halve the pomegranate and then bash out the seeds from one half to garnish the duck slices.
Squeeze some of the juice from the other half, just by hand over the duck as well.
Sprinkle with mint leaves or chives.

Serve it with mini home made roast potatoes or your choice of potato, rice or pasta.

Darcy's Banana Bread

This is named after a friend's little girl who is on a restricted diet so protein content really matters. It sounds complicated but I am assured it is actually very quick and easy!

MEWS free, corn free, nut free and delicious!

PREHEAT oven to 170C

Ingredients

• 350g peeled bananas (peeled weight)
• 180g-200g plain flour (rice and quinoa flour mixed works well with 140g-150g rice flour to 30g-40g quinoa flour)
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1tsp salt
• 1/3 cup brown sugar and white sugar mixed (if you convert this measurement remember different ingredients have different weights to cup values....)
• 1 tbsp water
• 1tsp xanthan gum
• 3tbsp oil plus any extra to grease a loaf tin
• splash of vanilla extract (I use the Madagascan vanilla extract from Lakeland, it's lovely!)
• 1tsp cinnamon (optional)

Optional nutritional supplements :-
2tsp calcium and vit D powder
5 scoops of Neocate
dash of apple juice if using the above and the acid helps the rise

Method

• Mash bananas in a large bowl
• Mix Sugar, water and oil and microwave/heat 30 seconds. CAREFUL IT WILL BE VERY HOT!!
• The oil will be sitting on top of the sugar so whisk through then whisk it into the bananas fast. (You could use a Kenwood type mixer instead)
• Add vanilla, salt to this "wet" bowl
• Mix everything else into the dry bowl and sift in to the wet bowl.
• Pour into a lined loaf tin, if you want a crunchy top then sprinkle some brown sugar over it before baking.
• Bake until a knife or cocktail stick comes out clean, allow to cool then cut in slices. 
• Freezes well.

IF YOU CAN USE EGGS THERE IS A BANANA MUFFIN/LOAF RECIPE HERE WHICH IS A GOOD ALTERNATIVE. I am looking forward to trying this myself - thanks Claire!

Fruity Teacake

Dairy, Soya, Wheat and Gluten free, no corn and could be egg free with egg replacer or alternative substitute.

This is really easy to make and tastes delicious. I substituted the figs and prunes for chopped dried apricots, the sultanas for raisins as a variation today.

Ingredients

• 150ml hot black tea made with two tea bags
• 200g (7oz) sultanas
• 75g (3oz) ready-to-eat dried figs, chopped
• 75g (3oz) ready-to-eat prunes, chopped
• 125g (4oz) muscovado sugar (does work with other sugar but the taste is best with this)
• 2 medium eggs, beaten (would be great with banana and a little egg replacer)
• 225g (8oz) gluten free flour (I have used Juvela harvest mix for this too as well as Dove's Farm)
• 2tsp gluten free baking powder
• 2tsp mixed spice

Method

• Pour the tea into a bowl and add the dried fruit. Soak for 30 minutes
• Preheat the oven to 180C and oil a 2lb loaf tin (or use a tin liner as I did!)
• Beat the sugar and eggs together until pale and slightly thickened.
• Add the flour, baking powder, spice and soaked fruit and tea then mix together well.
• Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface.
• Bake on the middle shelf for 45-60 minutes (mine took 50!) Check it's ready by inserting a skewer or thin knife and if it comes out clean, it's cooked through. Leave to cook.

Delicious sliced and served with Pure Sunflower Margerine!

Microwave Sponge Pudding

Here is a variation on the traditional sponge which can be successfully cooked in the microwave, making a quick and easy dessert! Sorry but I haven't tried this without egg yet.

Ingredients
100g SR Flour (I use Glebe Farm)
100g free from butter substitute (TREX, "Pure" sun flour/olive or Stork block but melt this a bit first)
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
30ml milk substitute
3 tbsp golden syrup

Method
Put the golden syrup into a pudding basin
Whisk the other ingredients together (or whizz in a Kenwood food processor!)
Pour on top of the syrup, smoothing to the edges of the basin so all the syrup is covered
Microwave on full power for 3-5 minutes.

If you use a shallow basin it will take 3-4 mins, 5 for a deeper one.
We regularly make half this quantity in a small basin and cook for 3 mins. I think substituting the egg might work better at half quantities too?

You can make a chocolate version  y replacing a small amount of flour with cocoa and replace the syrup with cocoa (& even coffee!) added to hot water.

I have no photos for this recipe as yet, it is usually seized upon and eaten very, very quickly by my children!

Delicious Chocolate Coconut Muffins

I have been experimenting with muffins and cupcakes lately, because I have had limited success with anything which doesn't contain banana of late, unless it's quite small it either goes dry or doesn't rise properly. So you can imagine the excitement when I found this recipe - which not only WORKS but as it only has 1 egg it is pretty easy to substitute to make it MEWS free.

Ingredients

• 5oz / 150g Self Raising Dove's Farm Gluten free flour
• 4oz / 100g caster sugar
• 4oz / 200g of either broken up free from chocolate (small pieces can be achieved in a food processor of chopped) or free from chocolate drops/buttons of your choice.
• 2fl oz / 50mls sunflower oil (NOT olive, hemp or heavier oils)
• 4fl oz / 100mls milk substitute of your choice
• 1 egg
• 2oz / 50g desiccated coconut
• optional vanilla essence

Method

• If, like me, you have a Kenwood Chef or a KitchenAid you can quite successfully chuck it all in and whizz it up. Otherwise you need to put flour, sugar, chocolate into the bowl. Mix well and make a well in the centre.
• Pour in the oil and milk into a bowl/jug and break the egg in. (ALTERNATIVELY ADD THE EGG REPLACER IN WITH THE DRY INGREDIENTS.)
•  Beat with a fork and pour into the well you made in the first bowl.
• Mix everything together and stir in the coconut.
• Spoon into cupcake cases, or larger muffin cases. 
• Cupcake cases will bake in 15 mins, the muffins take a little longer. Bake at 180C until golden on top.

Fun in the Sun!

Summer would seem to have finally arrived, and even if there is a temporary downturn in temperatures forecast for the rest of this week I am hoping, along with so many other EGID parents, that the summer season will herald a period of good health for our children. Obviously the summer presents its own difficulties for allergic kids, the pollen count remains high over much of the summer, but the reduction in colds and similar maladies is a very definite improvement.



I posted last summer about the amazing Bessant and Drury ice creams, but they are pretty expensive and it's nice to find some alternative. But finding summer treats which are free from the main food allergens can be tough, but my scouts have been hard at work and there have been several posts in our Facebook Group which I thought I would share on here.


Tesco have scored highly this week with two discoveries there.
"Strawberry Helter Skelters" are made with coconut milk and are MEWS free. (Milk, Egg, Soy and Wheat) Ingredients are below:-

Also from Tesco are the two finds here --------->
Free From "Banana Smoothies" also made with coconut milk, great for lunch boxes . Unfortunately my fussy pair didn't like them but then they are not huge banana fans.

"Flips" are a new type of crisp/snack.

Lastly one inventive mum has made some smoothie/ice cream (the latter if you freeze it!) from strawberry puree and oatly cream.

Tastes delicious although difficult to scoop into a cone!

Free From Easter eggs

With Easter just around the corner many people are asking for ideas for free from Easter treats.

There is a fantastic selection of gluten free easter eggs here which in many cases are also dairy and soya free. Remember most (but not all) people are fine with Soya Lecithin, it is a very highly purified oil and contains none of the protein to which most people react adversely.

Dairy free easter eggs re much easier to find than in past years, and children like the "Moo Free"

Many of the Hotel Chocolat chocolate is "free from", all are gluten free as far as I know (do check!) and all vegan ones are dairy free. Narrow your search and there is something for most people.