Peace of Cake London

Recently we decided on an impromptu trip to Selfridges when we arrived it was Nate's normal snack time but we had nothing for him to snack on. Off we set to find something suitable for him to nibble on, as we were out with his godmother it had to be something nice. Nate's godmother found these lovely biscuits by Peace of Cake they are not only dairy free but also gluten free. 

 

They were so lovely that even the non dairy-free/gluten-free among us loved them and didn't notice a difference. It was also great to find something that Nate can eat without me having to carry a bag full of safe goodies with me. 

Frank bars

I've been a little quiet here for a while as real life got in the way a bit. I'm back now though. We were recently sent some Frank Bars, they are gluten, nut and dairy free. Perfect for Nate, so as soon as they arrived we had to try one. Nate chose the Chocolate and Oat to try and we happily shared this, the other flavours I haven't been so lucky with. These are perfect snacks for a little person and a great post run snack.

 

Frank Bars come in five flavours: Chocolate and Oat, Double Chocolate, Chocolate and Orange, Chocolate and Strawberry and Chocolate and Blueberry. Of the little nibble I have been allowed of the other bars, my favourites are Double Chocolate and Chocolate and Orange. These bars are yummy treats for anyone not just those with allergies.

 

All of the bars have a lovely coconutty flavour from the coconut cream used, we love coconut especially as it is our most used milk alternative. All of the bars except the Oat and Chocolate contain EnergySmart and 4g of Protein, perfect for a pre-run snack.

At the minute Frank bars are on special offer on Ocado, buy 4 get the 5th free. Look on their website to see their other stockists: http://www.thefrankfoodcompany.com/

Disclaimer: We were sent the bars free to try but all opinions are my own.

Cooking together - pizza and apple crumble

Nate's favourite thing to do at the moment is to be involved in cooking. At nursery he has been practising cutting fruit and veg, and his fingers are never too far away from the chopping board if we are cooking.

We decided to make Apple Crumble, Nate had great fun helping me to peel the apples and then chopping them up into small pieces. After they had been cut up small he put all of the apple in a dish and we then covered it with our special crumble mix (75g of dairy free spread, 100g of flour, 50g of muscovado sugar and a teaspoon of ginger rubbed together) we then sprinkled a couple of tablespoons of oats on top. Nate really enjoyed this Apple Crumble and has been asking to make it again everyday.

We then made pizza, normally I make a pizza dough and make the pizza's myself but we decided to let Nate put whatever he wanted on his pizza so it would be his own creation and to encourage him to eat more. 

He started out by putting loads of courgettes on his pizza. So many we encouraged him to take a few off and put a few of the other things we had to put on the pizza's.

Nate's finished pizza contained courgette's, mushroom's, peas, sweetcorn and bacon on it. I also made some dough balls out of the leftover dough. Nate strangely ate all of the toppings on his pizza but not the pizza base. However, he enjoyed begin involved in the cooking process now to think up other meals we can make together. 

Nom Nom kids

Late last year I was sent some refillable pouches to review. Nom Nom Kids make refillable pouches which are perfect for weaning or carrying snacks for an older toddler. I have found it holds the perfect amount of custard to satisfy Nate. As Nate is dairy free I end up making a lot of alternatives for him and when we are travelling pots can be bulky and heavy so these are perfect for taking a dessert with us.

As his favourite dessert is custard at the minute I have found myself making custard a lot to put in them. We use Coconut milk (Koko) and Bird's custard powered to make custard for Nate. I find that you need less milk when using coconut milk but sometimes need to use a little more custard powder and you have to keep stirring the custard while it cools or it can become lumpy.

Another favourite here was apple and strawberry puree. One apple to 5 strawberries cooked down for a while and then pureed up.

Washing the pouches was very easy, I ran hot water through the ziplock opening and then through the spout to get rid of the excess food and didn't have to use a bottle brush although I did just to ensure they were clean and then 'hung' them to dry on our washing up dryer. The only negative I found was that sometimes even if you only fill to the max fill line some food can still come out when zipping it up, although I got better at not letting that happen the more I used them. You can find them here at www.nomnomkids.co.uk

We were sent these to review, all opinions are my own.

Home Baking Jaffa Cakes

We love baking, Nate loves making cakes. If I say I making cakes it's impossible to get him out of the kitchen. Which is great because we are doing things together and he actually wants to be involved in the whole process now, from weighing up (a great way of teaching numbers) to mixing and pouring the mixture into the cases.

For Christmas I was given Ms Cupcakes book which is a vegan baking book, I have seen some reviews that complain about the fact the recipes are 'American' but from the Jaffa Cakes recipe I'm pretty happy with the result.

We did a few things slightly different however, I made Orange jelly and didn't use the marmalade as  suggested in the book. I didn't find it took too long, I made the jelly while sorting out breakfast and we made the cakes just before lunchtime. The jelly was set long before we started making the cake mixture.

Orange jelly (this makes more than enough jelly for the 15 jaffa cakes Ms Cupcakes recipe makes)
150ml Orange juice (we used fresh)
1 gelatine leaf (vegan - 2  1/2 tsp of veg-gel)

Follow the instructions on your choice of setting agent.

I have recently had a giant jaffa cake from Waitrose who use chocolate fondant icing on their jaffa cakes, so I had to try it myself. I knocked up a fondant icing using dark chocolate and some fondant icing sugar. This is a work in progress as although it worked it wasn't exactly what I was hoping it would be. If you want to try it the way I did it's 25g Chocolate melted and 2 dessertspoons of Fondant Icing sugar. Keep it warm and covered while you work with little bits of it. It sets hard.

Chocolate fondant

Finished Jaffa cakes.

Homemade gifts

Early in December I posted a teaser post about what I could be making with these ingredients. 

For Nate and his cousins, I made peppermint creams or my version of them. Using the ready made icing and food colourings I made Dr Who shaped flavoured icing. I know Dr Who isn't very Christmassy but the children receiving the presents were all Dr Who fans especially Nate who can identify all of the characters on the mould.

Each of the colours were a different flavour, red was strawberry, green for peppermint, yellow for orange and blue for chocolate. Nate's favourite were the red ones, they were a great little gift for his stocking. 

The next homemade gift were biscuits, I made quite a few of these biscuits as I made some for Nate to ice for his nursery workers and these for the mini stockings as well. 

I used the basic dough I posted here.

Then I iced them, I'm not the best at decorating but I think I did a good job. I used the Baker's Toolkit for colouring the icing, which I can't rave enough about. The colours were vivid and I mixed a few to get different colours (orange for the snowman's nose). There were enough colours to keep Nate entertained. 

Disclaimer - I purchased everything I used in this post. 

Quick chocolate pudding

What do you when you have no pudding and the local shops sweet things all contain milk. I get out our favourite dark chocolate and coconut cream.

Melt the chocolate(40g roughly) and then stir in half a tin of coconut cream (not tinned coconut milk) and then pour them into small ramekins. Pop into the fridge for 10 minutes and they are ready to eat. 

Organix Mighty Soups

As part of our lovely bundle of foods from Organix were some Mighty Soups, the Mighty Soup we tried was Sweetcorn and Noodles. 

At the minute Nate loves sweetcorn so he was really happy to have a soup containing his favourite. As you can see from the picture the soup isn't a smooth soup but one that has bits in, encouraging children to chew. 

It was enjoyed here (I had a little taste and it was nice although a little bland for my adult taste buds) and Nate has his own soup at nursery when the others are having a food he can't have.

Allergy/Intolerance notice

Dairy Free Soups - Tasty Sweetcorn and Noodles

Hearty Root Beans and Veg

Gluten Free

Hearty Root Beans and Veg

None of the soups contain a nut warning although I have not contacted the manufacturer to check they are nut free.

Barbados Independence Day

30th November is Barbados' independence day, my grandmother is from Barbados, and my way of marking independence day is making Conkies. Conkies are a bit like a cake that are steamed (normally in a banana leaf) they are made/eaten as part of independence day celebrations. Although as always we have to make them slightly different, so there is no dairy, egg or nuts in the conkies I made.

Conkies (makes 7)

130g pumpkin (butternut squash)

110g sweet potato

130g desiccated coconut

1/4 cup flour 

1 cup fine cornmeal 

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/4 cup of milk (KoKo)

2 tsp of nutmeg

2 tsp of mixed spice

80g raisins (optional)

Grate the pumpkin and sweet potato into a bowl and then mix in the coconut.

Stir in the flour, cornmeal and baking powder. Add in the milk and raisins (if using). Mix together, it should have the consistency of a thick batter.

Get a square of foil roughly 15cm by 8cm (traditionally you would use banana skins), and Add a Dessertspoon and a half of the mixture in the middle of the foil. Wrap up the mixture in the foil and put in a steamer for 25 minutes. Check they are cooked by pushing the package (if they feel firm they are done)

Open up the package and enjoy. 

Comfort Food - Banana Jam Roly Poly.

What am I making with these ingredients

While making dumplings for our casserole the other day, I saw the recipe for a Roly Poly. Roly Poly's weren't a childhood staple for me but it made me want to try and make one. What about the filling though, we have lovely Strawberry jam in our fridge that could do but we love bananas here, and I had seen on one of the websites I frequently visit Banana Jam. 

Banana Jam

400g of banana (skins on, roughly 4 smallish bananas not the tiny ones)

1/2 cup and 1 tablespoon of Light Muscavado Sugar

1 cup of water (can add more if you want a thinner consistency)

2 teaspoons of Cinnamon (less if you aren't a cinnamon fan)

Pinch of Salt

Cut the bananas up and let them simmer for 20 minutes, stirring often.

The more you mush the banana's the thicker the jam will be, I like a smoother jam but left a few chunks as others like chunky jam.

I made the suet up to the recipe on the back for dumplings. I made a slightly bigger batch, so 60g of suet, 120g of flour ( I had plain flour so added a teaspoon of baking powder)

Roll out your suet pastry, & add a layer of your jam the pastry. The right hand edge was left clear as that was used to stick the roly poly together.

Ready to go in the oven.

I baked the Roly Poly at 170 for 30 minutes and made custard using our normal milk (Koko) and birds custard powder. It was a hit here with all of us going back for seconds. There was enough banana jam for jam on toast for breakfast. 

Advent Calendar

This year will be Nate's first time having an advent calendar, and it'll be a homemade one. There are a lack of good pictures of the advent calendar as Nate insisted on it going in his tent and then either laying on top of it or hiding under it. It is also not 100% finished, at the minute it doesn't have his name on it.

All of the numbers are in order unlike most advent calendars this was mainly to make it easier for Nate to get the right present and also so he can learn the number orders.

It makes a perfect blanket to hide under

What am I going to put in each of the pockets? Well every day there will be two little chocolates and a sticker. I found some lovely scratch and sniff stickers in one of our local shops. Nate loves his stickers so will love having a sticker everyday. For the weekend days he also has another little present such as a little puzzle from Tiger Stores(£1 each). 

As Nate is dairy free, I have been making little advent chocolates in non-advent shapes (Dr Who) from his favourite dark chocolate. These were made using the Chocolate mould from lakeland. 

Dr Who Advent chocolates

As Nate is a bit of a Who fan & the Doctor Who Magazine had a advent calendar as their free gift, Nate also has a Dr Who figurine for each day of advent.

We're starting to get a bit excited now.

BritMums Xmas

A picture post, there were so many lovely things and people, so I thought I'd leave the pictures to do all the talking.

A tip for those who are dairy free, put lard instead of butter under the skin of the turkey or a little olive oil (be careful with olive oil don't go mad) 

Organix Fruit Gummies

We were recently sent a box of goodies from Organix to review.

Too many for one review

The fruit gummies come in a little packet which is perfect for keeping in pockets or having a couple in your bag. There are two flavours Strawberry & Apple and Mango & Apple a packet costs 59p and are currently on offer in Tesco and ASDA (Tesco- 3 for 2, ASDA 4 for £2) 

The gummies are the perfect size for little fingers, I haven't had a chance to taste one for myself as Nate loves them and gobbles them up as soon as he sees a packet. There are five ingredients: Apple Juice, Apple puree, Strawberry puree, Pectin and Rice Flour. There isn't any information on the website as to whether they are guaranteed gluten free but there is no dairy and no warnings about them maybe containing dairy.

These are definitely a snack staple in our house, we have been out and bought several packets mainly of the Strawberry & Apple flavour as the Mango & Apple seems to be harder to get hold of. 

Pancakes/cakes

I have been experimenting with baking without eggs as they are on our shortlist of things that Nate reacts to. I liked the pancakes we had been served at the MomenTums launch so decided to tweak the batter to make cakes and to match what I had in the cupboard already (it was 6pm on a Sunday, no chance of getting to the shops)

I used this mixture to make a scotch type pancake and cakes

Pancake/Cake
1 cup of Gluten free Bread flour blend
1 1/2 teaspoons baking power
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 can Coconut Cream
1/2 Coconut milk (I use Koko)
4 Dessertspoons Sugar

Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients, mix well. If you are making cakes fill up cupcake cases and bake in a preheated oven for 13/15 minutes at 180 C
Pancakes - I left the batter while the cakes were baking and then heated up a non stick frying pan with a little oil, ladle in some of the mixture to make a pancake roughly 7cm in diameter cook them for a few minutes until golden (when you see lots of bubbles on the surface that's a good time to turn them) and then turn them over and cook until golden

Cooking the pancakes

These are the first cakey cakes I've made since baking without eggs, a lot of vegan cakes end up very oily or heavy, these are lovely and light. We then decorated them with a little icing.

These cakes didn't last long

Pumpkins

This week was halloween, and we had great fun carving our pumpkin. Nate enjoyed scooping out the seeds.

We didn't want to waste any of the pumpkin, so we promised Nate we'd make a soup. Nate chose the vegetables to go in the soup; carrots and parsnip. After carving our pumpkin and putting a candle inside it, Nate got a little scared of it, good time to make the soup.

In a pot we put the chopped up pumpkin and water with a stock cube we let that simmer for 10 minutes while we cut up the carrots and parsnip then in went the carrots again, letting them simmer for 10 minutes and for the final 10 minutes we put the parsnips in along with a teaspoon of turmeric, cumin and garam masala.

I then used the hand blender and plused it until smooth and served it with a sprig of coriander

Even the pumpkin seeds were roasted so none of our pumpkin went to waste. It was rather yummy so hopefully we'll be carving a pumpkin again next year.

MomenTums Cookbook

Last week I attended an event launching a new website, my blog post on the event is here.

I have since had the chance to try a couple of the recipes myself at home.

The first one I had to try was the pancakes. We couldn't pick up the Doves Gluten Free flour used at the demonstration as they didn't stock it in the Asda we visited but it is stocked in our local health food shops. Below is a picture of all of the ingredients needed.

Not many ingredients.

I remember it being mentioned that the batter is quite thick, but my batter was very thin, so I had to add some more flour. In fact I found that I needed to measure the coconut milk and orange juice mixed to the 240ml asked for in the recipe. However, the pancakes were lovely an fruity, when paired with Sweet Freedom they didn't last long at all. 

Cooking the pancakes.

These pancakes aren't thin crepes, they are more like scotch pancakes however, I'm sure you could make them bigger than I was but they shouldn't be thin or they will crumble due to the lack of gluten. 

Cows Milk Allergy Resources

Yesterday I attended the launch of online resources for cows milk allergy. These resources are aimed at parents with infants at present, the website is split into three sections: baby (0-12 months) Toddler (1-3 years) and school aged children (4-10 years). The website is MomenTums.

There are a few resources up there that are relevant for all age groups, one of the most important if you haven't got a diagnosis yet is the food diary. Keeping a food diary is very important and is normally one of the first things you're advised to do but no one suggested to me to also keep a note of moods and other symptoms exhibited. Another one of the resources explains the differences between Allergies and Intolerances.

My favourite resource is the cookbook, at the minute it is slightly hidden on the website but if you click on the read more button on the main page there is a link to a book for children with allergies. This book is worth downloading, the recipes it contains are whole family recipes. A previous book I had found contained recipes that were mainly weaning recipes or recipes for one child, I cook one meal for all of us so cook something we can all eat. There was a demonstration by Andrew Kojima (Masterchef Finalist) of some of the recipes from this book and I really enjoyed all of the recipes I tasted, I don't normally like sausages so was surprised to really enjoy the sausage casserole. The Mango Lassi requires a special mention, made with four ingredients (Oatley milk, Mango, honey (Sweet Freedom) and Cardamom seeds) it was unlike a 'normal' lassi but lovely and refreshing.

All in all, hopefully with resources like these it will make getting a diagnosis and understanding allergies slightly easier.

Great British Bake Off Free From episode

I've sat on this post for a little while to think about it and whether my first reaction was valid. I stand by my first reaction so here I am writing this post.

It's always great to see dairy free foods being spoken about, so the free from episode was perfect for us or so we thought. The first two bakes were wheat free/gluten free, cue slight disappointment from me. The last bake was a novelty vegetable dairy free cake, huge disappointment here. The novelty factor was a big annoyance for me in fact, most people seem to think it's 'just' a lifestyle choice to not eat dairy and I think the usage of a novelty cake cements that 'fact' in peoples minds. Then added to that the bakers had to make a vegetable dairy free cake, which in its own way should have been a challenge as vegetables will affect the bake it's almost like creating a dairy free cake wasn't hard enough.

There were also a couple of misconceptions; margarine contains dairy in fact most olive oil spreads contain dairy as well. There are a handful of spreads that don't contain dairy, we currently use Pure Sunflower. Eggs are not dairy, I'll use a friends anecdote "I've yet to see a cow lay an egg."

Please can we have a serious dairy free bake, a technical challenge maybe? All of the technical challenges are so dairy laden It seems like a challenge to remove the dairy from them. Alternative milks don't behave in the same way as milk does when cooked so it'd be great to see a technical challenge it isn't used in.

As an aside, Nate has recently changed his mind and wants Frances and Kimberly to win.

Dairy free ice cream

We have discovered Yonanas which is an ice cream maker with a difference.

Yonanas machine

You have to freeze two ripe bananas and 3/4 cup of other fruit although that's optional for at least 24 hours before you want to make the ice cream. The fruit has to be taken out 20 minutes before. Then push one banana through first and then the optional fruit before the last banana goes through. You then have lovely creamy ice cream, no added sugar and no dairy. 

Ice cream

Our favourite flavour combinations are:
Banana, raspberry and strawberry

Banana and mango

It gets a huge thumbs up from us. This was discovered by Nate's Uncle and is now used for every dessert while we are at grandma's. There is a freezer drawer full of pairs of bananas and frozen fruit for yonanas ice cream.