Chocolate Suncheroos

We have worked on this recipe for a while now. After having many attempts turn out very flat and overly chewy, we have cut back on the amount of sunflower butter and used a smaller pan for our bars. 

Perhaps the reason it took so many attempts was because we usually make our  crispie rice bars with sugar and corn syrup. But, we thought we would start simple and go from there. A month and 6 pans of bars later, we have a tasty peanut-free, dairy-free treat.

Chocolate Suncheroos (Sunflower Seed Butter Crispy Rice Bars)

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons dairy free butter 

1/2 cup sunflower seed butter

1 bag large marshmallows 

6 cups gluten free crispie rice cereal link

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips*

1/4 cup butterscotch chips*

Directions:

Line 9" x 9" baking pan with aluminum foil. Spray with oil.

In a saucepan over medium/low heat, melt dairy free butter. Add marshmallows. Stir until melted. Remove from heat, and stir in sunflower seed butter. Mix in the rice cereal until evenly coated. Press the mixture into the prepared pan.

In a glass bowl in the microwave, melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips for 30 to 45 seconds. Stir. Heat another 15 seconds if needed. Stir again until smooth. Spread over the top of crispie rice bars. 

Chill until set and cut into bars or eat while warm and gooey.

*It is possible to order both dairy-free chocolate chip and butterscotch chips from Amazon. You can purchase dairy-free semi sweet chocolate chips from Ghirardelli retail locations, but the semi sweet chocolate chips from local grocery stores are NOT dairy free.

Read More

Allergy Medications Dangerous for People w/Food Allergies

So there's this:

A notice about milk ingredients in several popular allergy medications: For those with a dairy allergy, watch out for these medications containing dairy: Link

Zyrtec and Zyrtec-D Adult 10 mg tablets

Zyrtec Children’s Chewables (5mg & 10mg)

The Allergy/Asthma Information Association (AAIA) lists other allergy and asthma medications that contain milk:

· Singulair 4 mg granules & 10 mg tablets (not in the 4 mg or 5 mg tablets)

· Reactine, Aerius, Claritin tablets (not liquid form).

· Benadryl 50 mg pink/white capsule (not caplet, chewable tablets or liquid form)

· Prednisone tablets

These asthma medications also contain milk:

Advair

Flovent

Foradil aerolizer capsules

Oxeze turbuhaler

Spiriva capsules

Symbicort turbuhaler

Ventolin diskhaler, diskus, rotacaps

Those with food allergies typically do have environmental allergies as well and may be using these allergy medications to treat their symptoms. Treatment for a food allergy reaction is epinephrine and a Benadryl or Zyrtec. 

Seriously, let's not give someone who's having an allergic reaction to milk a medication that contains MILK. 

Lactose Containing Asthma/Allergy Meds

• Singulair 4 mg granules & 10 mg tabs (but not 4 & 5 mg tabs)
• Reactine, Aerius, Claritin tabs (but not liquid forms). Allegra is lactose free
• Benadryl 50 mg pink/white capsule (not caplet, chewable tabs or liquid)
• Prednisone tabs but not Pediapred

Lactose Containing Asthma Inhalers

Lactose containing dry powder inhalers	Lactose-Free DPIs
Advair diskus	Bricanyl
Flovent diskus	Pulmicort
Foradil aerolizer capsules
Oxeze turbuhaler
Spiriva capsules
Symbicort turbuhaler
Ventolin diskhaler, diskus, rotacaps

All pressurized spray asthma inhalers (MDIs) are lactose free.  Link

Differences between Milk Allergy and Lactose Intolerance

Milk allergy should not be confused with lactose intolerance. A food allergy is an overreaction of the immune system to a specific food protein. When the food protein is ingested, in can trigger an allergic reaction that may include a range of symptoms from mild symptoms (rashes, hives, itching, swelling, etc.) to severe symptoms (trouble breathing, wheezing, loss of consciousness, etc.). A food allergy can be potentially fatal.

Unlike food allergies, food intolerances do not involve the immune system.  People who are lactose intolerant are missing the enzyme lactose, which breaks down lactose, a sugar found in milk and dairy products. As a result, lactose-intolerant patients are unable to digest these foods, and may experience symptoms such as nausea, cramps, gas, bloating and diarrhea. While lactose intolerance can cause great discomfort, it is not life-threatening. link

A milk allergy is commonly mistaken for lactose intolerance, which is a different condition that causes digestive symptoms. If you have a milk allergy, a common symptom is a skin rash. Hives and eczema are also common rashes associated with a milk allergy. link

Read More

Chocolate Coconut Barley Cake

Today, I thought I would try something completely on my own. Since it's Thursday**, Natalie is off at school for the whole day. That leaves me in the kitchen alone. I have this bag of barley flour that has remained unopened since we bought it. So, I thought it was time to try a NOT gluten-free recipe. This one is starring Chocolate, of course.



**Now that it is Friday, we are, of course, reworking the recipe. The original recipe attempt is way down at the bottom of this post. While the cake has a nice sweet chocolaty favor, it is very dry and crumbly. This seems to be a problem with anything we bake without wheat flour. 



It also lacks that coconutty flavor that I thought would come through from the oil and the coconut milk. Since the coconut flavor is buried beneath the chocolate cocoa flavor, we are adding an extra pop with unsweetened coconut. The one thing the cake is, is sweet, so we don't want to add anymore sugar. Thus, the UN-sweetened coconut.

We added a starch to our flour to try and work on the crumbly texture, along with coconut creme, instead of coconut milk. Additionally, we increased the amount of oil in the cake. We did this mostly to offset the addition of moisture the shredded coconut would remove from the cake. 

Finally, we are playing around with mayonnaise and egg yolks, trying to find a good balance to replace the missing egg whites from the dough.

To keep this cake moist, we are also cutting down the baking time to around thirty minutes. And, finally, I am going to try an old baking trick I haven't done in years. By using two inch strips of towel, or terry cloth, soaked in water and pinned around the edges of the cake pan, the cake will bake more evenly, keeping the edges of the cake from cooking faster than the center. 

Adding the shredded coconut gives it a nice nutty coconut punch. This is a denser cake that reminds me of Hostess Sno Balls. I have always loved those, so I think this is a fabulous thing. That is also why we are going to work on making a marshmallow frosting to go with this recipe, next.

Chocolate Coconut Barley Cake

Ingredients:

3 egg yolks

6 Tablespoons mayonnaise (yolk only type)

1 cup coconut oil melted

2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/2 cups barley flour

½ cup potato starch

3/4 cup cocoa powder

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 can coconut cream
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Use 9" x 13" baking pan. Coat with nonstick spray.

Beat sugar, egg yolks, coconut oil and vanilla together until smooth and creamy. In separate bowl, stir barley flour together with cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. A fork works well for this blending process. Add unsweetened coconut and stir until blended. 

Add the tablespoon of apple cider vinegar directly into the open can of coconut cream and stir together. Set aside for two to three minutes. This will create a mock dairy-free buttermilk for the cake.

Mix half of the dry flour mixture into the moist sugar mixture slowly. Add half of the coconut liquid sugar mixture while mixing. This works really well with a stand mixer. Or add liquid and then mix. Add rest of dry mixture and beat into moist sugar mixture and then finish up with rest of the coconut liquid. Blend until everything is well combined.

Pour batter into oiled pan and bake for 28-30 minutes. Cake is finished when  top springs back when lightly touched. 

Original attempt:
4 egg yolks

1/2 cup coconut oil melted

2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups barley flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 can coconut milk

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Read More

Everything-Free Chex Mix

Because it is always important to be preparing for the upcoming Holidays, I thought I would work on updating my Chex Mix recipe. It is now completely gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free happiness. I researched each product to make sure they would work in this recipe, so in this case, Brand names are important. 

For example, to be certain of a soy-free Worcestershire sauce, be certain to stick with Lea & Perrins. I was unaware that walnuts are seldom included in Mixed Nut mixes because they go bad quickly. This is a happy thing for me, as walnuts are on my allergy list. Peanuts, of course, are also easy to avoid, as many nut mixes are peanut free.

DO NOT USE WHEAT CHEX IN THIS MIX IF YOU WANT GLUTEN OR WHEAT-FREE CHEX MIX!!

This recipe is more of a add more of what you love type of recipe. If you love pretzels, add lots of them. If you love nuts, go nuts with the nuts. Cheerios® are my favorite, so that is where I always add extra.

Recipe:

Corn Chex® whole 12 oz cereal box

Rice Chex® whole 12 oz cereal box

  

Cheerios® 1/2 8.9 oz cereal box

Gourmet Deluxe Mixed Nuts (No Peanuts) 1 cup or amount desired

Snyder's of Handover Gluten Free Pretzels whole 8 oz bag

3/4 cup Smart Balance® made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil

6 Tablespoons  The Original Worcestershire Sauce Lea & Perrins ®

2 heaping Tablespoons Lawry's Seasoned Salt

Spices below are what we already had in our cabinet.

1 heaping Tablespoon garlic powder (we used McCormick)

1/2 heaping Tablespoon onion powder (we used Safeway Kitchen)

pinch of cayenne pepper (we used McCormick)

Melt liquidy salty stuff together in sauce pan. Pour over mixed cereals in large turkey pan. Be sure to stir up well to get buttery, salty goodness evenly distributed on all of the cereal, pretzels and nuts. Bake at 250 degrees for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. 

Package in airtight container once cool. Hide from children or plan on making over and over, again. We make Chex Mix at least three times during the Holidays, sometimes more.

Read More

Not Coo Coo for Coconut

We keep running in the same problem. Every time we try and replicate a recipe from the 'past', we come up with some alien food that most often ends up in the garbage. The most recent example is our attempt at biscuits and gravy.

First off, we kept seeing recipes that called for make your own 'Bisquick' mix, so we looked up one that we thought we could convert easily. We settled on this one:

http://blessherheartyall.com/one-minute-gluten-free-bisquick-mix

And, of course, because nothing can be that easy, we had to switch the dry milk powder out for dry coconut milk powder. Even cutting the sugar down to 1/4 cup, this biscuit mix ended up making biscuits much too sweet to work with our planned Biscuit and Gravy meal. That, and our sausage gravy made with butter replacement, almond milk and corn starch instead of butter, milk and flour, made the entire meal disappointing.

This meal followed a week filled with dairy-free cheese grilled cheese sandwiches and gluten -free tomato soup and more dairy-free cheese macaroni and cheese. Artificial cheese grilled cheese sandwiches taste like nothing. Seriously. There was absolutely no taste besides greasy bread. The macaroni and cheese did not taste too bad, but it smelled like vomit. This was from a pre-boxed mix that said 'delicious'. I grasp that I am going into this world kicking and screaming, but seriously I understand perfectly why people say gluten-free food tastes awful, because, mostly, it does.

Even tomato soup! Really Campbells, you put wheat into tomato soup? And not just Campbells, everyone! And, if it is not wheat, then the Tomato soups have to be fancy Cream of Tomato and contain milk! The only ONE I have found without wheat or milk is blah, blah, blah! Sigh.

I think what the real problem is that we are trying to recreate tastes instead of just starting over. I have had vegan cheese lasagna that was really good. So, we need to just throw out every thing I need to know about food and begin again. 

I think the first thing we have learned is that pre-packaged foods are a NO GO. If something feels it has to claim it tastes good, that is not a good sign. Next, we need to concentrate more on the fresh ingredients that are so readily available in California. Fruits and vegetables are abundant year round at both grocery stores and farmer's markets.

A couple of years ago, I lost over 60 pounds by completely changing the way our family eats. Sadly, most of the techniques I used included yogurts, skim milk, smoothies and cereals I am  no longer supposed to eat. Replacing skim milk with almond based and coconut based milk is frustrating. High fat, high calorie. Plus, the stress and frustration of figuring out how to make this all work explains all of the new cookie recipes.

What we really need to work on is more smoothie recipes. So far, like everything else, all of the yogurts that we have tried are pretty awful. This week we need to try harder to find better, healthy and tastier recipes. Avoiding coconut flour, which Natalie doesn't like. Actually, she doesn't seem to like anything coconut, flour, yogurt, ice cream, or milk. Or almond flour, which I don't care for, though the milk is fine. Natalie does like the almond flour. Go figure.

I think a trip to Costco is in order, so we can get a couple of bags of frozen berries, which work best for smoothies. And then, we will work out from there.

Read More

Sunflower Seed Butter Monster Cookies

Yes, another day, another cookie recipe. In case you haven't noticed, we work up a recipe first, and then bake it up. Meaning, as I am typing these first few words, we have not baked anything, yet. Since the easiest way to record what ingredients we decide upon is just to write them right into this blog, we are literally testing the recipes as we go. 

Monster cookies is a recipe the we have made for many, many years. At the beginning of the school year, we would make up a big batch of monster cookies, and freeze them. Then, when the kids came home from school, or play rehearsal, or football practice, there were always giant cookies to snack on. Of course, I ate many of them, myself.

So, this is our first test of gluten free Monster Cookies. In order to cut down on the number of eggs we are going through, we have decided to test out a version of this recipe using mayonnaise as a substitute for part of the eggs. 

We are also in disagreement, at the moment, as to how much vanilla to use. I always increase the amount of vanilla in a recipe, Natalie has taken that idea and doubled up again. She believes we should add a whole tablespoon of vanilla to this recipe. Considering we start with Mexican vanilla, which is a very strong vanilla, to begin with, that will make these very, very vanilla-ey, indeed. 

Also note, even though we replaced the butter in this recipe with a butter free blend, this is not a dairy-free recipe because of the M&Ms. 

 Sunflower Seed Butter Monster Cookies 

Ingredients:

1/3 cup dairy-free butter blend

6 tablespoons mayonnaise (yolk only type)

3 egg yolks

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups sunflower seed butter

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

4 1/2 cups oats

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup milk chocolate M&M's

1/2 cup dark chocolate M&M's

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

In large bowl, cream together butter, sugars, sunflower seed butter, egg yolks and mayonnaise until well blended and creamy. Add vanilla.

Mix in baking soda and oats. Mix on low until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips and milk chocolate and dark chocolate M&M's.

Using a large spoon, scoop dough onto ungreased cookie sheets. Cookies do not spread much so flatten slightly before baking. Bake at 350° for 12-14 minutes. Remove from oven and cool a couple of minutes. Move to wire racks.

During the first test run, we ended up with more granola, than cookies. so we added another egg yolk to our batter. The additional yolk helped hold the cookies together better and, as Natalie says, "Gives them more poof. We also added a teaspoon of salt to our original recipe. We are learning that sunflower seed butter cooks up much sweeter than peanut butter. The salt helps to cut that sweetness.

Our oven cooks on the hotter side, so 12 minutes is plenty long enough for our cookies to bake and still have a bit of moist gooey inside.

This is, by far, our best recipe, to date. And yes, I realize that there are not very many recipes on this blog, yet, There are many attempts we have not recorded, as of this time. And a few that will fade away forever. Blah! Sunflower Seed Butter Monster Cookies, however, are definitely worth the effort of baking up several more batches!

Read More

Gluten-Free Lemonade Bars I

Yes, so it seems as if we are obsessing on desserts and sweets. Today, we baked up a pan of Lemonade Bars. One of my all time favorite desserts, it seems natural that this would also be one of the first things we would work on to make allergy-free. 

I always like to have fresh lemons on hand, but today I only had two, thus our recipe for 'Lemonade Bars' was created. Also, I have been wanting to test out a recipe with almond flour as the base so this is that first attempt.

We, of course, had our typical issues. Like, forgetting to zest the lemon BEFORE we juiced it. And, the stirring, stirring, stirring to keep the eggs from scrambling instead of custarding, brought of the not very unique, but always enjoyable phrase, "I did my stirring...12 minutes of it...in Azkaban!"

 

In the end, making these bars dairy-free with the dairy-free butter blend worked out well for the lemon custard, as did using both fresh lemon and condensed lemonade. Again, being able to use egg yolks is always a bonus in this strange new allergy world. The lemon custard in these bars worked out perfectly.

The almond crust, however, was limp and just okay. I think if you really like almonds, this would be okay. My husband thinks that taste wonderful, but he, too, thinks they could use more firmness in the crust. We are going to work on a more traditional 'shortbread' type crust to go with this lemonade custard, as well.

This was today's effort. We are calling it Gluten-Free Lemonade Bars I, because there will no doubt, be a Gluten-Free Lemonade Bars II to come.

Gluten-Free Lemonade Bars I 

Crust:

1 cup almond flour

2 tablespoons dairy-free butter blend, melted

2 tablespoons sugar

Lemon custard filling:

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup dairy-free butter blend

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice 

1/4 cup condensed lemonade

Zest of one lemon

Powdered sugar

Instructions

Making the crust: 

Stir almond flour together with melted butter and sugar. Spread mixture evenly into a 9" ungreased square pan. Press down firmly. Bake at 350°F for 8 to 10 minutes. Set aside to cool. Turn oven down to 300°F.

Making the custard: 

Blend the egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, condensed lemonade (straight from can of frozen lemonade, no water added) and lemon zest together until well mixed. Pour custard mixture into double boiler on stove or use heat proof glass bowl over pan of low boiling water. Slowly scoop spoonfuls of dairy-free butter blend

into custard mixture, stirring constantly. Let butter blend melt completely between each each scoop until 1/2 cup is stirred in. 

Allow custard to simmer over steaming water until it thickens. Stir constantly. This should take about 10 to 12 minutes. Take off the heat and remove any curdled egg bits or overly large bits of lemon zest. Cool for 15 minutes before spreading the lemon custard over the crust. Bake at 300°F for 16 to 18 minutes, until custard is set. 

Cool first, then refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving. Sprinkle top with dusting of powdered sugar.

Read More