Food allergies and birthday parties - easy allergy-friendly cupcakes

Artistic talent not really necessary

Does your heart sink when your child with food allergies bounds out of school waving a party invitation? Me too.

Not because I'm a tight-fisted killjoy and I don't want to fork out for yet another present (although that too) but because parties are a bit of a trauma when food allergies are involved.

I have spent miserable hours positioned behind my daughter watching her say no to chocolate fingers and elaborately iced cupcakes. I'm a dab hand at frisking party bags for allergens and I can catch a falling milkshake from twenty paces (slight exaggeration). So all in all, parties with food allergies are pretty crap.

But, whining won't get us anywhere will it?

So I'm about to show you how to rustle up some allergy-friendly cupcakes for when your child is next invited to a party. 

And the aim here is to make the cupcakes look so damned amazing that all the kids with easy lives and no allergies say "Wow! Can I have one?" (Answer: "No, piss off and eat a chocolate finger.")

You will need:

1 allergy friendly chocolate cake recipe: 

This recipe never gets old

1 tub of Betty Crocker filthily naughty, how-many-additives-can-there-be, delicious icing:

It's OK to eat this straight from the tub. (With your fingers.)

And an array of pretty, allergy-friendly cake decorations (and maybe a bag of marshmallows):

It's OK to eat all six

Here's what you do:

1. Realise a bit late that there's a party in a few hours and you have to provide 'safe' food for your child
2. Quickly print off my chocolate cake recipe, or my chocolate and zucchini recipe
3. Follow the instructions, but put the mixture into cake cases, not one big tin. Bake
4. Leave to cool, during which time you can run around the house looking for scissors, sellotape, a clean party outfit and the birthday card that you have put in a 'safe place'
5. Apply Betty Crocker icing to the cupcakes liberally and with gay abandon
6. Then go wild: for the spiky cake, use the back of a knife to pat the icing so that it forms little peaks, for sprinkley cakes, apply - err - sprinkles and for my favourite marshmallow cakes, cut the marshmallows up and stick on the cake until it looks impossibly sickly and decadent
7. Feel pleased that your child has kick ass cake
8. Go to the party
9. Come back from party
10. Pour a stiff drink 

There, not so difficult was it? :-) 

© Pig in the Kitchen All Rights Reserved

Review: The Just Mustard Choc a Bloc Cake Mould

If only Cadbury made Dairy Milk with massive chunks like this...

A friend of mine works for a large multinational that makes confectionery, coffee and George Clooney. 

He once told me - the friend, not George - that the chocolate you eat as a child defines your view of how chocolate should taste. And that any chocolate you subsequently taste will always be compared to your personal chocolate benchmark.

Aside: (I love the idea of a personal chocolate benchmark. It sounds delicious, like a bench made from chocolate. Oh. How cool would it be to have a chocolate bench?)

My childhood chocolate was Cadbury's Dairy Milk  I loved it with a passion. I think I loved it all the more because Mum wouldn't really let us have chocolate, so when Christmas rolled around it not only meant presents, it meant Dairy Milk. Ahh, good times...

I'm about to make a bit of a leap here, so keep up.

So, when the lovely Jude from Just Mustard contacted me to ask if I wanted to review the 'choc a bloc' cake mould, I said yes.

Full disclosure: I said yes mainly because the mould instantly reminded me of a huge bar of Dairy Milk and I was lost in a chocolate reverie. In my weakened state I would have agreed to anything. (Sorry Jude!)

So here's what happened...

On receiving the mould, my first, uncharitable thought was that the cake would definitely stick in the mould.  

But I was wrong.

I used my go-to chocolate cake recipe and it slid out of the mould beautifully. Only thing is, the 'yum' that is printed on the mould didn't show on the cake. I think this could be because using GF flour in a cake (without eggs) often leaves a residue of crumbs in a mould; it just doesn't come out as cleanly as a cake made with eggs.

The kids loved the look of the brick of chocolate and it was all going well until I tried to ice it.

'A smooth ganache would be good' I said to myself. 

The ganache had other ideas. 

I'd fancied that it might adhere beautifully and smoothly to the cake so that it looked JUST like a bar of Dairy Milk. But it didn't. It just kind of looked messy.

So I baked another cake and put all my faith in BettyCrocker. Even worse. I could NOT get the icing to adhere and it was all an unsatisfactory mess.

But to be clear, that has nothing to do with the cake mould which worked brilliantly. It just didn't transform my cake into a giant bar of Dairy Milk, and I really can't blame Jude, Just Mustard or the choc a bloc mould for that.

Although not specifically for allergies, this mould is fun to look at and my daughter loved it. She hears 'no you can't have that' way too often, so she was thrilled to be eating cake shaped like a giant bar of chocolate. So for that alone, it's worth having this novelty cake mould!

  

And when I was nosing around the Just Mustard Facebook page, I saw that another blogger had used the mould to make Rocky Road. 

Which is a much better idea and why didn't I think of that?!

The 'choc a bloc' mould is £8 and is available from the JustMustard website.

Looks amazing. Just wish it were easier to ice!

© Pig in the Kitchen All Rights Reserved

Venice Bakery UK launches gluten free & vegan pizza bases

Gorgeous gluten free, vegan pizza base, an oxymoron? Not at Venice Bakery UK

 Pizza and allergies equal a bit of a no-no.

There's the cheese, the wheat and gluten, the milk in the dough and sometimes even egg. Pizza is sort of like an anaphylaxis time bomb, just waiting to blow.

Trouble is, it's pretty yummy.

On Fridays, our house is given over to 'Friday night pizza'. (Exhausted mums will know this is code for: 'It's Friday night I'm not even going to pretend to cook a meal".)

My daughter is 'only' allergic to milk and eggs and not gluten or wheat. Dairy free pizza bases are quite easy to find and topped with vegan sausages and vegan cheese, they satisfy my girlie's need for junk food.

BUT, I've often heard people begging for  GF pizza that is crispy and tasty and just like, well, real pizza. So when Venice Bakery UK asked if I wanted to try their pizza bases that are free from gluten, wheat, diary, egg and soya, I was happy to give them a whirl. 

Can I be honest? I wasn't expecting much. Sure, they'd be tasty enough, but not REALLY like pizza.

Well. How wrong can a food allergy blogger be?

These bases are amazing. I stared angrily at the dough as I broke it because it acted like a pizza base heavy with gluten. 'How do they do that?' I frothed to myself, 'why can't I do that?' (Answer: I'm too lazy to try.)

First time around I didn't read the instruction (RTFM!) and put the pizza base on a baking tray. The edges of the base were crisp and gorgeous, although the middle was a little soft. But when the next pizza was placed directly onto the oven shelf, well look I don't say 'perfection' lightly, but how would you tell this was a pizza made without gluten? Methinks you wouldn't.

I particularly love the fact that the base is thin, rather than thick and stodgy. My gluten free sister-in-law agreed. "Best tasting gluten free pizza I've had. Really, really nice."

Venice Bakery UK also sent me a gluten free flatbread and I fully intended to make a curry to go with it, but I'm just so lazy. So when there was no bread for breakfast. I offered my daughter a flatbread spread with dairy free margarine, sprinkled with chocolate powder. (I am totally a class act in the kitchen.)

My daughter's reaction? "It's like toast, but better!" Which sounds like a damn fine strapline, no?

I really recommend these pizzas. For weeny kids, the pack of 3 pizzas is a great buy at £3.39 and the larger 12" ones - perfect for a Friday night pig out - are a respectable £3.79. The pizza bases and flatbreads are available from the Venice Bakery UK website: www.venicebakery.co.uk.

Venice Bakery UK are launching the pizzas at the Allergy +free from show this weekend (June 7-9), they'll be at stand 136, so flock there in your millions and get your hands on some mighty fine gluten free, vegan pizza bases!

For more information visit: www.venicebakery.co.uk

© Pig in the Kitchen All Rights Reserved

Gluten free chocolate and pineapple upside down cake

What do boys need after rugby? A big slab of cake

So I have three daughters, one son and a confession.

 I don't really understand boys.

Girls? Easy. We have the same hormones, physical attributes and uncanny knack of always being right.

Boys? Ve-ery different. All that aggression, unexpected sensitivity and just how much food does it take to fill them up?

So, in a bid to understand boys, over the  last year I've spent time watching my son on the rugby pitch.

Here's what I've learnt:

They're an argumentative lot -If the coach calls a boy out for messing around, the boy instantly protests his innocence no matter how obvious the lie. Is this the difference that testosterone makes? Is this why men negotiate their salaries as a matter of course while women are just... grateful? (Ladies, we could learn a thing or two here.)

They fight like puppies and come up wagging - When the boys break for a drink, there is wrestling, piss-taking and I once heard a boy say to another   - à propos nothing - 'You're a pig-nosed git'.  No reaction. This kind of comment on a netball pitch could unleash weeks of low level, bitching hatred. (Ladies, should we let go of the bitching? But it's soo much fun... :-)

They whinge, whine and then get over it - One time I watched a boy get swung around by his shirt, which is not allowed. He whirled around - eyes wide with outrage - to the ref. 'Play on' called the ref. Outraged boy couldn't believe the ref wasn't going to do anything. He threw his gum guard away, and went to sulk behind a hedge. (Ladies, men have hormones too.)

They don't bear grudges - Later, one of the coaches went to find the boy. There followed a man-to-man chat. The boy came back, apologised to the ref and play carried on. (Ladies, we should forgive and forget more easily.)

They need to be treated like dogs - From time to time the boys got too boisterous and the coaches called them to heel. When that didn't work, they made them run around the pitch, which instantly calmed them down. (Ladies, should we just get dogs instead?)

It has been a fascinating year. The coaches managed the unruly boys with a mixture or straight talking, discipline and turning a blind eye-ness.  

But although I admire the coaches for their approach, I do have one over on them. And that's pudding.

Because I may not be versed in the ways of men and boys, but I do know that the way to my son's heart is through his stomach.

So here's my sure fire way to communicate with a tired, rugby-playing boy; chocolate and pineapple upside down cake.

Crouch, touch, set! 

Chocolate and pineapple upside down cake

All versions:
130 g dairy free margarine (or butter)
120g sugar
110g golden syrup
60g cocoa powder
4-6 pineapple rings
enough milk/coconut milk to give a dropping consistency (up to 150ml, possibly less)

Egg free, dairy free, gluten free
For the egg replacer: 

1 heaped tsp of Orgran 'no egg' egg replacer

1 heaped tbsp ground linseeds

¼ tsp xanthan gum

¼ tsp baking powder

4-6 tbsps milk/coconut milk (enough to give a smooth, runny mixture)

175g Doves Farm gluten free self raising flour 

1 tsp baking powder

½ bicarbonate of soda

Gluten free with eggs

Replace the egg replacing ingredients above with one egg

Egg free with wheat flour

Replace the gluten free flour with 175g self raising wheat flour

• Line a rectangular tin - 21x25cm - with baking parchment
• Arrange the pineapple rings on the base of the tin (chop them in half if necessary)
• If using the egg replacer, place the dry ingredients into a small bowl and add the milk/coconut milk. Whisk with a mini whisk to get rid of any lumps and set aside. You're after a consistency that's quite thick, but also resembles the consistency of a beaten egg. Have I completely confused you?
• Heat the oven to 180° Celsius
• Place the dairy free margarine or butter, golden syrup and sugar into a large saucepan and melt over a low heat. When melted, remove the pan from the heat
• Add the egg or egg replacing mix and stir
• Add the flour (gluten free or wheat), bicarbonate of soda and if using gluten free flour, add an extra tsp of baking powder. Stir to remove any lumps. Now the tricky bit; add enough milk/coconut milk to give a dropping consistency, but not too much. Nice and clear isn't it? I'd start with 4 tbsps and build it up gradually if necessary
• Scrape the mix into the cake tin so that the pineapple is covered. Level the surface
• Bake for between 20 and 30 minutes until the cake has risen, is springy to the touch and an inserted skewer comes out clean
• Leave to cool in the tin then turn out onto a serving plate. Serve with dairy free cream, or dairy free custard or dairy free ice cream. Yummy. I want some now
• Serve to the exhausted, grubby, rugby-playing man in your life. He will thank you for it

© Pig in the Kitchen All Rights Reserved

The Free From Food Awards Ceremony 2013

Michelle in full flow

The invite to the Free From Food Awards 2013 dropped into my inbox and I was all of a dither.

Should I hire a limo? Are dresses long or short this season? And which hip thrust forward will give maximum slimness on the red carpet?

I know. I live in cloud cuckoo land.

So, on the evening of the awards, my date and I joined other smartly clad ladies as we tottered around in heels - sans limo - trying to find the entrance to the Royal College of Physicians.

And as we ascended the marble stairs, there was the jewel in the crown. No, not Anthony Worral-Thompson, but the fragrant Michelle Berriedale-Johnson and her unfailingly calm assistant, Cressida.

How those women were still standing after weeks of organising food judging and then an awards ceremony, was a mystery.

But they were in fine fettle and Michelle kicked the evening off with a speech and the promise of a buffet at the end, comprised of the winning foods.

Can you spot me?!

It was when Michelle mentioned the buffet that at least one person in the audience thought they hadn't won an award. This was because Michelle hadn't placed an order for his product. The man in question said:

 "So we definitely haven’t won. Just as well really, I’m p**sed already."

And no I can’t tell you who it was because a journalist can never reveal her sources. Wink.

And so the winners in all categories were announced and happy free from food producers received their certificates and had their pic taken with Anthony Worral-T.

Huge congrats to Bessant and Drury for winning the FAIR trophy for the best free from food 2013 with their lemon ice cream and big cheer for Pudology whose Banoffee Pudding was highly commended.

I was amazed at the range of fab products that were runners up or winners. In particular the gluten free Aloo Paratha from the Indian Coeliac looks amazing. It's also egg free, nut free and soy free.

I also like the look of this white chocolate couverture from Mortimer chocolate company.    Mainly because I used to love white chocolate mice as a kid and how cool would it be to make them dairy free?

And finally, with summer maybe happening sometime before Christmas, how cool are the Eskal gluten free party tubs?  I'm itching to try these because I once saw a cake baked in an ice cream cone. Random, but delicious.

The last food judges standing (I look relatively sober)

And after the awards presentation, I have to confess that the rest of the ceremony was a little - umm - blurry.

I cannot tell a lie, I imbibed a little white wine. I remember a thoroughly enjoyable conversation with Grace Cheetham and I also remember being flushed and probably not very coherent.

And remember the guy who was p**sed and thought he wouldn't win?

Well, Michelle and Cressida had placed an order undercover and his sausages scooped the prize. He unleashed a mighty roar when the decision was announced and cheered all the way to the podium.

Definitely the funniest moment of the evening.

And according to his Facebook page, his carousing carried on into the early hours. Snigger.

Well done Pig and Co, your name is fab!

Julian Price from Pig & Co. Celebrating demurely

For a full list of winners and runners up, visit the Free From Food Awards website.

Thanks to Media Wisdom Photography for the photo links 

© Pig in the Kitchen All Rights Reserved

Linseed and sunflower seed 'crackers' (vegan, gluten free, dairy free)

My husband called these 'bird food'. An unnecessarily cruel comment...

I'm going to say up front that yes, these look strange. 

They have definitely crossed the line between 'slightly unusual food (due to allergies)' and 'OK these look insane, far too weird, I will definitely not make them'.

It's allright, I understand.

They ARE weird. But if you're trying a low carb diet, they are a good vehicle for transporting hummus into your mouth. 

I will be totally honest and say that the coconut oil is a little overpowering and...oh god I have to stop being honest or no-one will make these!

Look, they are what they are and they are nutritious. And doused in maple syrup how good would they taste? 

I don't know because I'm on a low carb bloody diet and I can't try it! 

Do me a favour? 

If you make these, come back and post a comment so I can see whether I'm definitely in the foodie (weird) badlands, or whether actually, these aren't that bad at all.

I've done a truly terrible job of selling these, haven't I?

:-) 

Linseed and sunflower seed 'crackers'

The following measurements are very ad hoc, use your culinary wisdom to reduce or increase the amount of seeds in play.

3 tbsps linseeds (whole or ground, up to you. whole ones give more crunch)

3 tbsps ground pumpkin seeds

3 tbsps ground sunflower seeds

Approximately 2 tbsps coconut oil

cupcake cases

• Line a muffin tin with cupcake cases
• Put the coconut oil into a small saucepan and heat very gently until melted
• Add the seeds and stir. If there seems to be too many seeds and not enough oil, add a bit more oil. If not enough seeds, add more
• Using a teaspoon, dollop a small amount of seed mix into each cupcake case and use the back of the spoon to level off the surface
• Place in the refrigerator (or freezer) until the coconut oil has set
• Taste. Hmm, what do you think? Weird or wonderful??!
• Use for wacky canapes, as a decoration for your tomato soup (that would look cool, the oil would melt and you'd be left with a pretty seed formation!) or to munch on when you're starving but your diet book says 'no more food'
• Come back and tell me what you think!

© Pig in the Kitchen All Rights Reserved

Gluten free seed crackers (vegan, and maybe raw?!)

The leaning tower of...seeds

Here's the deal: I ate too much over Easter.

The result? I'm feeling like a fat bloater.

The other result? As my birthday approaches (this week!) I've decided:

• I'm definitely middle-aged
• I'm also a bit lardy in places 
• My metabolism has unhelpfully found a new - lower - gear
• It's time to shed some skin.

So for the first time EVER I'm going on a diet where a recipe book will tell me what to eat. 

I've quashed my inner critic (quite a job as she's put on weight over the years too) and I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the book.

And behold the picture above! It is the result of a cunning low-carb plan that took shape in my head as I came back from the school run! 

I'll be back soon with the - ahem - 'recipe'. 

(Those were ironic quote marks to indicate that this is more of a melt-icipe - ooo look! I invented a word! - than a roll up your sleeves, time-to-trash-the-kitchen complicated dish.)

Hasta luego gente muy amicale de mi blog! (ooo look! I made up some Spanish too!)

Pig x