"Cheese" Straws

Growing up, my favourite things to bake were cheese straws. I've never been a fan of sweet biscuits and cakes, and being something of a cheese-aholic any opportunity to bake something cheesy has always been seized upon! So it always makes me a little sad that being dairy free, my children are denied this simple pleasure.

"Free-from" cheese has come a long way in recent years. In the past, all alternatives were based on soya, which we cannot have either. "Cheese" like VBites Cheezly is ok... but is difficult to cook with and really isn't "cheese" at all. Vegusto is lovely, but again - not *really* like cheese, and not safe for many with allergies since most of their products contain nuts. So the discovery of Violife cheese  has been little short of revolutionary!

Tesco sell some of their products, or online retailers like Goodness Direct but hopefully as more people get to know about these wonderful cheese alternatives supply will start to meet demand!

Ingredients of the original (used in this recipe) are here. They do not guarantee to be nut free as far as I can tell, but nuts (other than coconut oil) are not an ingredient. 
DO CHECK WITH YOUR DR IF YOU HAVE A NUT ALLERGY.

So, armed with this wonderful "cheese" I decided to make my daughter some cheese "straws" or biscuits!

Ingredients

• 6oz of your choice of flour. NB I would not use plain rice flour since it will be too breakable.
• 3oz your choice of margerine/butter substitute
• 3oz of diced Violife original cheese
• teaspoon of mustard if tolerated
• salt and pepper to taste
• EITHER 1 egg to bind and a dash of your milk substitute
• OR teaspoon extra (even if there is some in your flour blend) of Xanthan Gum and vegetable oil to bind. (roughly 2 tablespoons, but add one at a time)

Method

• Just like making pastry. Rub the fat into the flour
• Add the chopped/diced cheese, mustard, salt and pepper
• EITHER add the beaten egg and if required some milk to make a dough consistency
• OR add the extra Xanthan Gum, and oil to bind until a dough like consistency is achieved.
• Bake at 180C for 15 minutes

I made these with the egg version today, I have also made them egg free. I use a Kenwood mixer which makes it MUCH easier to achieve the required consistency as you can control the binding agents better.

My daughter informs me that she is making these herself next time. She also pointed out (correctly!) that the next time I have some pastry mix left she will add some cheese and roll it into these cheese biscuits!

Clearspring Organic Purees

Disclaimer - I was sent a selection of Clearspring organic purees for an honest review. The views expressed are entirely my own.

About Clearspring

From their website:-

Clearspring have been trading in the UK for over 20 years, last year (2013) Clearspring celebrated their twentieth birthday. Marketing "Authentic, wholesome, easy-to-prepare and great tasting Japanese and fine foods for optimum nutrition" Clearspring has a wide range of products to suit everyone.

• All their products are 100% vegan with no artificial additives, MSG, colourings, preservatives or refined sugars and they subscribe to extremely high standards. 
• Clearspring have won many awards, being Commended in the Free From Food Awards in 2014.
• All Clearspring products are Dairy Free and refined Sugar Free.They also have a Gluten Free range and a Nut Free Range

Perfect for Us 

We at The Recipe Resource struggle with complex food allergies, and are always on the look-out for new products with single or few ingredients. Clearspring purees are perfect in this respect - but what *really* got us excited, beyond the obvious single ingredient, ease of use in cooking/baking, perfect weaning food options was their new range of pouched purees!

Clearspring "On the Go" Fruit Pouches

My eight+ year old twins have just gone into Year 4, and no longer is it deemed acceptable to take  fruit puree pouches in that have come from the baby food aisle of the supermarket. I have used such brands for years, but however good the contents are you are not going to persuade either of my two that they acceptable in their lunch anymore. Also, since both have swallowing issues and many allergies it can be tricky meeting their nutritional requirements each day, and with a few wobbly teeth to boot its impossible biting in to fruit however soft! So I'm thrilled about these pouches - as are they.

Clearspring Puree Range

Like many parents feeding children on exclusion diets, we avoid multiple proteins. All too often the food industry substitutes these proteins (which often add flavour) with processed fillers and excess sugar and sweeteners. This is one reason why I won't purchase cakes, biscuits etc for my children. I rely on fruit to give homemade treats a naturally sweet flavour, and purees are perfect on meringues, in cakes, on cereal, in fact they have so many uses I like to keep a stock of them all the time! 

Without a doubt Clearspring offer the best variety of purees I have ever seen. They offer are a variety of blends as well as pear on its own. Often, in strict exclusion diets pear is one of the first foods you are asked to try, as it is one of the least allergenic foods. (see this chart for a Food Allergen Scale.

Any banana puree can also be used as a raising agent, so the pear and banana puree is ideal for adding to muffins to help them rise - often a problem is you are excluding, and substituting egg. (See this chart for other egg alternatives.)

I used the pear and banana puree to make some fruit muffins:-

The basic banana muffin recipe is here and I made pear muffins here and added cocoa powder. This time I made the banana muffins with the puree, banana helps them rise and the pear was a lovely additional flavour. The texture was really velvety smooth too.

Lastly I wanted to make some fruit puree lollies but my lolly moulds split recently. Instead I used the strawberry and apple puree to make a lolly mixture, using this recipe but obviously the puree instead of the frozen fruit. It was delicious but would definitely be better as lollies in proper moulds, like these!

Cooking with Neocate - Quiche revisited...

I've posted about our efforts with Quiche before both here and here. I've used two pie crust pastry recipes over the years, but we are now gluten free so I stick to the Juvela Harvest White mix recipe on the back of the boxes. It works well for us - BUT it isn't egg free.

Eggs serve to enrich a dough because of their fats. So anything with a certain amount of fat would work like condensed milk or extra butter or oil. However, keep in mind that though eggs are liquid when you add them to a recipe they change into a solid when they are heated. So if you are adding an ingredient such as milk or oil that does not solidify on heating, you must remember to add a little more flour to your recipe to act as a binder.

The other reason egg is used in pastry is to make it more malleable, you can use milk or water to replace egg but your pastry will not be as delicate as milk and water release the starch out of the flour and make it stretchy. So it will be perfectly edible but not as delicate.

It IS a dilemma, but given that THIS post is about quiche - or EGG PIE as we have to call it in this house - and given that quiche needs egg I'm going to gloss over this. Sorry. However, I do feel this a bit lame, and have tried backing an eggless quiche once. The Vegg can be used to make the filling and an eggless crust IS possible, just not as easy to work with. There is a list of egg substitutes here.

I would LOVE to see some of your egg free success stories, (especially the savoury ones) and will test and feature any I'm sent on the Recipe Resource.

Now for the Neocate part....

Best Ever Falafel mix!

Not suitable for everyone, obviously. However having tried and tested several falafel mixes this is by far the best!

It is by far the easiest to make - just soak in boiling water then form into balls and fry. but the best thing for us about this mix is that it is smooth, with no partially cooked pulses/crunchy bits in it. Given that the main consumer of falafel in this house has swallowing difficulties I am delighted with this find.

Amisa Falafel Mix. Bought locally (Woodbridge, Suffolk) but widely available - Ocado, Amazon.co.uk, goodnessdirect.co.uk, and real foods.co.uk .

All details are listed on their website.

Lunch Boxes

I am loving the new containers currently available in the shops, especially the Sistema range. It's becoming much easier to make interesting lunches for the kids.

Tomorrow A has cold sliced free from sausages (The "Good Big Sausages" from Waitrose) with his favourite tomato sauce in a mini sauce bottle from Lakeland, and some crudités in his partitioned box by Sistema from The Range.

K has crudités and houmous in a little screw top dip pot (also by Sistema, from Lakeland, pack of four) in her partitioned box.

I will send sandwiches with marmite (only filling A will touch) in the new Free From sliced white bread from Tesco ( best I've found so far) but I also send buttered (well, "Pure" sunflowered) fruit bread (see a couple of posts down) for K and muffins, cakes etc to give variety. Add in a packet of Pom Bears, Plain Hula Hoops or the new Tyrrels individual bags of plain lightly salted crisps and a fruit pouch I'm definitely increasing our repertoire ;)

I have bought insulated food pots and children's thermos flasks (easy open) for winter too. Hoping to have more success persuading them to try soup or pasta lunches. Might be a tough battle, they are creatures of habit!!

These are also very useful for children's lunches:-

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/16194/2-Biscuit-Holders-For-One

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/3756/Biscuits-for-One

Simple Potato Cakes

I can't take the credit for this recipe, or even for finding it, but it is definitely one worth sharing!

All instructions and excellent step by step photos  are on a sit called "The Pink Whisk"

A friend said the following:-

"We've made these using pure sunflower spread and rice flour. They are really yummy, Finley adores them. We've frozen them individually, defrosted over night and then put in the microwave for 20 seconds just before eating and they are nice and soft. I did try to defrost in the microwave and they burnt to smithereens!"