Tag Archives: Xanthan gum

A Birthday Treat – Lemon Meringue cupcakes

This time last year, M was admitted into GOSH for scopes and he and I spent Mike’s birthday away from the birthday boy himself, leaving him to celebrate at home with the rest of the family. There was a point this year when I thought history was about to repeat itself as we’re once again waiting for an admission date for M, who needs further testing to try to sort out the games his body is currently playing. However, Mike’s birthday came, and went, with no sign of a phone-call from GOSH and I finally had a chance to make a long-awaited attempt at the Lemon Meringue cake I’d been dreaming of making last year.

Lemon Meringue pie is Mike’s favourite dessert and there was a time, many eons ago, when I’d actually make him one from scratch for his birthday treat. With the arrival of G and M, the general busyness of work and juggling the school-run alongside business meetings and the general day-to-day running of the household, I don’t think I’ve turned my hand to such a dish for at least a decade. Add into the mix, the newer challenges of egg-free meringues and MEWS-free pastry and it’s not been the easiest pudding to make. I attempted a cheesecake version for Fathers’ Day this year, but that didn’t quite go as planned, so I put my thinking cap on to see if I could figure out an alternative format for this popular dessert.

I settled on lemon drizzle cupcakes topped with vanilla butter-cream icing and small meringues. I’ve made Lemon drizzle cake before, but found that the rice flour made the sponge taste very granular and I was keen to see if I could improve the texture. I found a lovely recipe for vegan lemon drizzle cake and read around the options for replacing the flour to make the cake both gluten- and potato-flour-free. My final recipe included gram flour – an ingredient that’s been lurking in my cupboard for a while, but which I had yet to brave using – rice flour and tapioca flour and the end result was infinitely better than the last time, though some further tweaking to create the perfect lemon drizzle cupcake is needed.

I whipped up a small batch of my vanilla butter-cream icing and used it to secure the mini egg-free meringues to the top of each cupcake. I was delighted with how these cakes looked and M spent most of the day, and evening, before Mike got home from work, begging to try one to “just check it’s okay for Daddy!” I am assured by the family that the cupcakes were a huge success and so that’s another recipe added to my ever-increasing repertoire.

A Chocolate-Lover’s Birthday

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Recently someone posted a link to this easy cake recipe on one of the EGID support group forums I belong to on Facebook. I was soon drawn to its simplicity, not least because it was already dairy-, soya- and egg-free, but also because the comments that followed suggested it could be easily converted to a gluten-free recipe too. What was even better was that I had the perfect occasion to try the recipe out – my Mum’s birthday. As you may recall, we had planned a special afternoon tea at the Grand Floridian whilst we were on holiday, but the actual date was now approaching and we had a family lunch booked for the day itself.

I think it would be fair to say that my Mum is an avid chocolate-lover, one might almost say a chocoholic and there used to be a time when you’d be hard pressed to find her without an emergency chocolate bar stashed in her handbag, glove box or on the top shelf of the fridge. Bearing that in mind, it was something of a no-brainer to decide on a cake that would satisfy her idea of chocolate heaven. The bigger challenge was in making that creation both deliciously decadent and M-friendly.

I doubled up the quantities in the chocolate crazy cake recipe and chose to mix the ingredients in a bowl, rather than in the cake tins themselves as I wanted to make 3 individual layers to sandwich together. I replaced the flour with a blend of rice and tapioca flour and added a pinch of xanthum gum to help it on its way. The cakes that came out of the oven appeared to be beautifully moist and not too granular, although Mike’s first comment on tasting some of the trimmings was that they were a lot sweeter than my usual bakes. I swirled vanilla butter-cream icing with spoonfuls of Grandma’s strawberry jam (all the way from Canada) and used this to sandwich the layers together. Lashings of home-made chocolate butter-cream icing then covered the entire cake, before I finished it all off with a generous sprinkle of pearl drops, moo-free chocolate buttons and shavings of moo-free orange chocolate.

It looked like my idea of a chocolate-lover’s dream birthday cake and tasted good too. My Mum thought adding raspberries would have added a little sharpness to cut through the sweetness of the chocolate, but there wasn’t much left after her meal, which is always a sign of a good bake!

60 birthday wishes!

Delicious date and ginger cake

Gnocchi

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With the end of the school year just around the corner and G preparing to start her final year of Juniors in September, I’ve recently been reminiscing about her baby years and in particular, when we first found out I was pregnant with her. I had just qualified as an accountant, was about to move to my first job in industry and Mike and I were on holiday in Florida. My main recollection, other than the overwhelming joy of discovering we were expecting our first child, is eating Gnocchi at the Via Napoli restaurant at Epcot. For those not in the know, gnocchi are mouth-watering Italian potato dumplings and, quite obviously, this experience was in the days before my own potato intolerance was identified.

As I recalled the delicious flavours that literally melted in my mouth during that holiday, I wondered whether this was a food experience that I would ever be able to enjoy again or one that I could introduce to my multiple allergy-suffering children. I did some research on-line and found two recipes that almost fit the bill. Whilst neither was perfect by itself, I could combine and adapt them to create both M-friendly and G-friendly gnocchi. Due to the pernickety nature of my eldest, who won’t touch sweet potato with a 10-foot barge-pole, I had to use this allergy-friendly recipe, whilst I needed the expertise of this sweet potato alternative for M. I decided it would be worth the time and hard work required to cook both recipes if I could find a new meal that both would ultimately enjoy.

I will warn you now that this is not a recipe for the faint-hearted as it is relatively labour-intensive, but the delightful end result was, in my opinion, well worth the effort. I invested in a potato ricer, which produced the most wonderfully smooth mashed potato I’ve ever seen. I have since learned that you can achieve the same result using a bog standard food blender, but I’m thrilled with my shiny new kitchen gadget and wouldn’t swap it for the world.

I almost come unstuck over the weighty decision of a sauce, but decided to err on the side of caution and prepare the one suggested with the sweet potato gnocchi recipe, keeping my fingers crossed it might pass muster with G and M alike. I am astounded and delighted to announce that neither child turned their noses up at my home-made gnocchi and they were an unexpected resounding success. Unbelievably both children cleared their plates and G was so enthusiastic about the dish that she asked if I could make it again the following day!

The batches of the gnocchi dough I had made with my adapted recipe were enough to not only feed the 4 of us a hearty dinner, but also allowed me to batch up 3 more dinners for G and M and pop them into the freezer for future occasions. As the Italians would say, “molto delizioso!“

Sneaky Veg

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I am a past master of sneaking vegetables into my children’s dinners. They’ve unknowingly enjoyed years of grated carrot mixed into baked beans; parsnips, swede, turnip or even cauliflower mashed into potatoes; and pureed peppers or mushrooms or sometimes both stirred into pasta dishes or satay chicken. I’m not alone. Mum grates courgette into their “Pasta Thursday” meal at her house each week and so far, we’ve both got away with it. But, as my children grow older and their tastebuds mature, I’ve noticed they’ve become more discerning when there’s an additional flavour added into the dish and so I’m having to become even more cunning when it comes to get extra vegetables into my reluctant duo.

With a new bake in mind as well as the need to introduce a new vegetable to G, I decided to take a firm favourite in our household. the good ol’ chocolate cake and add that well-known twist, beetroot. M has always enjoyed beetroot, but I have never been able to convince G to try even the tiniest morsel of it more than once in her 10 years. I was confident that hiding it in chocolate cake would work and so took Nigella’s recipe and worked my magic to make a M-friendly version.

I was a little nervous that eagle-eyed M might notice the beetroot baking in the oven and put 2 and 2 together when the chocolate cake appeared later, but he doesn’t seem to have made the connection, though I know he’s a little suspicious that it might be the “surprise” ingredient in the cake. Both children enjoyed their slices, but G has forbidden me from telling her what the ingredients are until the whole cake is finished – just in case she decides she won’t eat any more once she knows. It’s been a great success and yet another way to get one of those all important 5-a-day into G and M.

M’s Daily Bread

Oh la la, the ultimate baking challenge

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Courtesy of theguardian.com

Two weeks ago, G and M came home from school bursting with details of their up and coming MFL Day – a day to experience more about the Modern Foreign Languages they both learn at school. Not content with themed craft activities, dance lessons and extra language practice on the day itself, school naturally decided a food treat would be an ideal extra for the day too. G and the rest of Years 5 and 6 would be baking and then tasting their efforts in school, whereas M and the others in Years 3 and 4 were simply going to enjoy eating a shop-bought version. The teachers couldn’t decide on an easy, Spanish treat, so the whole school would try a French delicacy instead.

Just when I thought baking couldn’t get any harder, I was presented with the ultimate baking challenge – chocolate croissants!

It was relatively easy to accommodate G’s dietary needs for the day as she is only wheat- and dairy-free. G could participate in the French cookery lesson, where the children were using supermarket croissant dough and milk chocolate to create their masterpieces, but rather than eating her own creation, G would give hers to her teacher and instead enjoy one of the marvellous Genius gluten-free Pains au chocolat that I had tracked down in our local Tesco. We hadn’t tried these before, but G assures me that they were absolutely delicious and she can’t wait to enjoy them again.

M, naturally, was a completely different story. School had agreed that I could provide a M-friendly chocolate bar as an alternative to the chocolate croissants the rest of his class would be enjoying, but I wanted to see if I could bake an equivalent for him to eat. Had I realised just how much work was involved in making these French delicacies, I might not have even entertained the thought, but having researched a recipe, I thought I’d give it a go. M has been finding things tough recently and I didn’t want him to feel even more different from his classmates. I was determined to attempt an edible and reasonably delicious safe version of chocolate croissants.

The original recipe I found was a vegan one and needed a little tweaking to allow for M’s current wheat- and gluten-exclusions. I replaced the plain flour with rice flour and took the decision to not add xanthum gum this time round. The croissant dough that resulted was difficult to work and I found it nearly impossible to perform the “laminating” process that is required when making this specialised pastry, I will no doubt attempt these again and will play around with my recipe to include xanthum gum to see if I can achieve the perfect consistency needed for this dough. I added the chocolate, baked the croissants and was pleasantly surprised at just how authentic my first attempt looked.

However, whilst the end result was not quite as I had imagined it, M was delighted that I had managed to produce a reasonable croissant and declared it an immediate hit. At the end of the day, I got the result I was after, one happy boy!

Something nutty for the weekend

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Having tried a variety of snacks over the last few weeks – Dorset apple cake, chocolate chip cookies, ginger cream biscuits and banana bread – I decided it was once again time to turn my hand to something new. This time I felt inspired by the children’s love for all things peanut butter and decided to venture into the world of peanut butter cookies. I’ve sampled these delicious treats when visiting family and friends in Canada, but have never thought to bake them at home. We are extremely lucky that neither M or G suffers from a nut-allergy, so I was keen to perfect this recipe as another addition to my ever-expanding repetoire of M-friendly snacks.

"Perfect" cookies, courtesy of www.alaskafromscratch.com

“Perfect” cookies, courtesy of http://www.alaskafromscratch.com

The recipe I found was easy to follow, easy to adapt and most definitely easy to bake. The first batch of cookies spread to an unbelievable size, so once those had been devoured – and trust me, they really didn’t last very long at all – I used the remainder of the dough to cook another batch. This time I popped a spoonful of dough into each well of a muffin baking tray, which produced a more even and crispier version of the cookie. M loved the second batch even more than the first as he prefers his cookies with a crunch.

You can find my adapted recipe here, but I have to confess that I’m still working on reducing the sugar content as they are extremely sweet and I think could be just as good with a little less sugar. Enjoy the weekend!

My “not-so-perfect” ones

Banana bread to rival the Godmother’s!

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Courtesy of minionslovebananas.com

As part of our recent plan to given M a substantial bedtime snack, M and I sat down to discuss what sort of foods he could choose from before bed. I originally proposed a bowl of cereal or a couple of slices of toast, but quickly learned that this caused M no end of confusion. Sometimes M struggles with his understanding of the world, can take things a little too literally and is very much a creature of habit. Unexpected changes to his routine have been known to throw him for a loop and cereal at bedtime proved to be one such thing. M very much associates cereal with breakfast and just couldn’t grasp that it would be okay for him to have it again later as a snack. No amount of patient explanation would persuade my obstinate lad to change his point of view and so I gave in to the inevitable, abandoned that suggestion and hunted around for some “acceptable-to-both-of-us” alternatives.

We agreed on a few staples from the fridge and the store cupboard including Wot no Dairy! yoghurts, Frank* bars and Nakd bars, but I wanted to add something new to the equation too. Thinking hard, I remembered that M had been requesting banana bread for a while and I wondered if I could once again find and adapt a recipe to satisfy this craving. Around 4 and a half years ago, one of M’s godmothers, L, looked after him for an afternoon whilst I was at a check-up at our local eye hospital. I’m not sure she’ll even remember the occasion, but M certainly does, predominantly because that afternoon they baked banana bread together. This banana bread has gained a position in M’s memory as the best, most delicious banana bread in the whole wide world ever and nothing has ever compared, or even come close. He talks about the amazing smell and delicious taste, whilst the rest of us have, I have to confess, pretty much forgotten all about it,

My challenge, therefore, was set. To create a loaf of banana bread that not only met M’s current dietary requirements, but that also needed to equal the memory of L’s bake all those years ago and I was ready to give it a go. I found a relatively simple recipe, adapted it to suit and set about whipping up my masterpiece. The smell of baking banana bread tantalised both M and G, who were forced to wait patiently until bedtime to sample it.

Our kitchen was silent as they took their first, and then subsequent bites and Mike and I waited nervously for the verdict. G declared it instantly as the “best thing she’s eaten, ever” and was full of praise. M was a little more discerning in his comments. My banana bread was great, as the empty plates in front of my children attested to, BUT it comes a very close second, as L’s still tops the rankings in his opinion. So L, if you’re reading this and have even the vaguest recollection of that now infamous banana bread and the recipe you used, please give me a clue, so that I too can bake the “Best banana bread in the world”.

	M	Me	Mike
Breakfast	Smoothie (1/2 banana, 5 strawberries, 200mls rice milk)	Orange	Bowl of: Free-from cornflakes Rice milk
Lunch	Sakata rice crackers (4) Free-from spread Fruit string	Sakata rice crackers (6) Cucumber Celery Peanut butter Sliced pear	Left-over chicken casserole and rice
Dinner	4x sweet potato wedges Pork belly slice (1/2) Cucumber Apple (1/3)	Sweet potato wedges Pork belly slices (2) Courgettes Mushrooms	Sweet potato wedges Pork belly slices (2) Courgettes Mushrooms
Snacks	Fruit buttons (blackcurrant) Capri sun orange drink Brazil & Sultana bar (1/2) Rice bread (1 slice)

7 years to diagnosis

Searching for an answer