Blackberry and apple sponge puddings

We seem to be having an excellent bramble season here in Skipton and it is officially our favourite fruit. Our boys are splendid blackberry pickers and we had a very successful picking trip to Bog Lane on Monday. It doesn't sound like a great location but the blackberries are very fine and we got there by cycling along Brackenley Lane which sounds much nicer. After two jars of blackberry jam and a handful of blackberry and apple crumbles in the last couple of weeks, Hamish, Lachie and I decided to get a bit creative yesterday. I told the boys our blackberry and apple puddings would be 'an experiment' and Lachie said 'You like lady on CBeebies!', by which I think he means I am like Nina and the Neurons! I am quite flattered! Doesn't she drive some sort of milk float?

We based our puddings of course on our favourite chocolate cake recipe, but without the chocolate...

Blackberry and Apple Sponge Puddings (dairy and egg free)

Blackberry and apple sauce

1 punnet wild blackberries

1 large bramley apple

sugar to taste

Sponge cake

5oz self raising flour

3oz caster sugar

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 1/2oz dairy free margarine

1 1/2 tbsp golden syrup

1/4 pint soya milk

I use 4 individual pudding tins

To make the blackberry and apple topping, put the washed blackberries in a pan with the peeled, cored and chopped apple and a little sugar, cover and cook on a low heat until the apple has softened. Taste the stew and stir in more sugar to taste. Divide the mixture between the pudding tins so that there is about an inch of blackberry and apple sauce in the bottom of each tin.

To make the sponge mix, stir together the flour, sugar and bicarbonate of soda. Rub in the margarine. Stir in the syrup and milk. Spoon this lumpy mixture into the pudding tins on top of the blackberry and apple, until the tins are almost full. (We had some mixture left over to make some fairy cakes). Bake the puddings in the oven for 20 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.

We let our puddings cool for about 20 minutes before we ran a knife round the edge and tipped them out, scooping out all the sauce onto the top.

I can officially declare that our puddings are no longer experimental - they are fantastic! I am very proud of them. The boys absolutely loved them and Hamish was asking for them again today after tea!

Flapjack

Lachie is very keen on making and eating flapjack at the moment and we seem to be making it every week. It has taken me a long long time to master flapjack, but I think I finally have success with this recipe. I was always confused by the idea of cooking until golden brown, when it goes into the oven golden brown in the first place. Now I just stick to a set time and temperature.

Flapjack

6 oz dairy-free margarine

6 oz soft light brown sugar

2 tbsp syrup

8 oz rolled oats

Melt the margarine, sugar and syrup together, then stir in the oats. Flatten the mixture into a swiss roll tin. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Cut into peices when it comes out of the oven and cool in the tin.

We like variations on this theme too, favourites being raisin flapjack (stir in a couploe of handfuls of raisins with the oats) and chocolate flapjack (drizzing the cooled finished item with melten chocolate). Hmm, how about chocolate raisin flatjack...

A long awaited carrot cake

It is a long long time since I have been here. While Lachie has been eating gluten and we have been waiting the the results of his coeliac test I think we have been resting on our laurels. Not exactly forging ahead with exciting new baking! But this week we have baked alot and the most exciting baked item was a vegan carrot cake. I love carrot cake but don't think Lachie had ever eaten any. 'Carrot cake' is now very much part of his vocabulary.

I found this recipe after a google seach for 'vegan carrot cake' and it is excellent. I was a little worried after the addition of the water, it looked a bit ... watery. But have faith, the reults are superdoo.

Carrot cake (dairy and egg free)

8 oz grated carrot

6 oz raisins

10 oz self raising flour

6 oz soft light brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

7 floz sunflower oil

7 floz water

a pinch of salt

a dash of vinegar

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Mix together the dry ingredients and then mix in the wet ones. Pour the mixture into a lined square cake tin (I think mine is about 10 inches). Bake in the oven for 45 minutes at 190 degrees Celsius and then another 30 minutes at 160 degrees. Cool in the tin.

We iced our cake the next day with 3 oz icing sugar beaten into 1 1/2 oz diary free margarine with a dash of vanilla essence. This was a bit stingey on the icing front, I think you could easily double that.

I have to say that having made this cake I can't see why you would feel the need to put egg in a carrot cake. I loved it, the boys loved it and Hamish's friend Nancy who came to tea loved it. Yum.

Tis the season for chocolate biscuits

Yes, it is March and yes, Lachie is wearing a Father Christmas outfit. He is super cuddly in all that red velour. Yesterday we made our favorite biscuits - I can't believe I havn't posted this recipe before! These biscuits came from the Pure margarine website which is excellent - you tell them what you want to avoid and they give you recipes. They have lots of different versions of a shortbread recipe and this chocolate chip version is really very fine. I have been eating these biscuits all morning. They are loved by the gluten-free and gluten-eating alike and have a lovely melt in the mouth texture that you don't seem to get that often in gluten-free baking!

Chocolate Chip Cookies (gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free)

200g Pure (dairy-free) margarine
100g caster sugar
200g rice flour
30g cocoa
100g chocolate chips (eg Dr Oetker plain chocolate chips which are dairy free)

Cream together the margarine and sugar and then mix in the other ingredients to get a thick dough. Lachie loves pouring in the chocolate chips (and then stealing them back out of the bowl).
Roll into little balls and arrange on a baking tray - I usually get at least 30 biscuits - and flatten each one with a fork. The biscuits don't spread when cooking so they can be fairly close together.
Bake at 170 degrees Celsius for 12 - 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and try to resist eating them all while the chocolate chips are still molten.

If we are going to toddlers we usually take a couple of these in a tin for Lachie to eat, and Hamish is also partial to a couple on the way home from school.

Back from the brink...

It has been a quiet time on Lachie's Allergy Cookbook, primarily because Lachie hasn't needed much cooking. The wee chap has been poorly for a long time now, or that is how it feels to me! His third ear infection since Christmas was treated with a double dose of Erythromycin which gave him awful nappy rash and made him sick. He then picked up a horrible gastric bug which lasted another 5 days (and which he kindly passed on to his big brother), and that was followed by another 7 days with no appetite and much sleepiness. It is a very very sad time when Lachie cannot be tempted by crumble or cake and when he sits in his buggy just holding a biscuit because he doesn't have the appetite to eat it.

Anyway, this weekend he seems to have turned a corner and is back to three meals a day. This morning at the swimming pool his little trunks, usually skin tight, were all baggy and he spent most of the session saying 'Hungry! Hungry!' So it is official, Lachie is back from the brink.

Iced Chocolate Fairy Cakes

This is a recycled recipe as the mixture is the same as for the Snowflake Chocolate Cake, but in celebration of Lachie's return to normal life I made him some Chocolate Fairy Cakes. Half the Snowflake Chocolate Cake mixture will make 12 fairy cakes and I bake them for 20 minutes. When they were cool I iced them with simple water and icing sugar white icing and decorated with chocolate sprinkles - multicoloured hundreds and thousands contain gluten! So chocolate sprinkles it must be. Lachie was very pleased with them and after his first bite said... 'Mmmm'.

Welcome back Lachie!

Lemon Dream Cookies

Poor wee Lachie has been down with another ear infection so he had to stay at home this afternoon rather than heading off to the pool with Hamish and Robert. Never mind, we did some baking instead! Last week I saw some Dove Farm gluten-free lemon biscuits in Morrisons and felt inspired to attempt something similar. Lachie and I got inventive and adapted a recipe for Dream Cookies that Granny has had for as long as I can remember.

Lemon Dream Cookies (free from gluten, dairy and eggs)

4oz dairy-free margarine
3oz caster sugar
4 1/2oz gluten-free self-raising flour
juice and zest of half a lemon

Cream together the sugar and margarine. Stir in the flour and lemon. For normal dream cookies this would make a mixture you can roll into balls. I thought the gluten-free flour would soak up the lemon juice but this didn't seem to be the case and this actually makes a cakie sort of mix. Spoon the mix into 16 pieces onto a greased baking sheet (Lachie got a bit anxious at this stage, obviously thinking I'd forgotten a key ingredient and started shouting 'Chocolate chips! Chocolate chips!' but I perservered - not all biscuits have to contain chocolate chips Lachie!). Bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 160 degrees celsius and cool on a wire rack.

As you can see from the picture, Lachie couldn't wait to get his hands on one and Hamish also thought they were pretty good when he came home from the pool. They have a crunch on the outside but are chewy within and really very nice. I'll go and try another one now just to make sure...
Mmm yes, subtly lemony too.

A delicious chocolate pudding

As previously mentioned puddings are the order of the day in our house! We are trying to fatten up Lachie's big brother Hamish who seems to have become very skinny (not Lachie though who has quite a tum). This recipe is one I used when we were only dairy- and egg-free and I have just changed the flour to make an exceedingly good gluten-free version. It is one of those brilliant puddings where the sponge appears above a chocolate sauce. I think it is especially yummy if you use Green and Black's Maya Gold chocolate for a subtle orangey spiciness!


Lachie's Self-Saucing Chocolate Sponge Pudding (free from gluten, dairy and eggs too)

For the sponge
2 oz dark chocolate (dairy-free)
1/2 oz dairy-free margarine
1/4 pint soya milk
6oz sugar
4oz gluten-free self raising flour (eg Dove Farm)

For the sauce
2oz soft brown sugar
3oz caster sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
8floz water

Melt the chocolate, margarine and milk together in a pan on a low heat. Stir into the flour and sugar and beat together to a cake mix consistency - add a bit more milk if it is too stiff. Pour the mixture into a small casserole. Put the sauce ingredients straight on top of the sponge - there is no need to mix them together. Pour over the water and bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 1 hour. Leave to cool a little bit before serving.

I must say that I think this recipe is too much for 2 adults and two children under five, however it always gets finished. I don't know where they put it.

Just because they're dairy-free doesn't mean they can't be cow shaped

Now that Lachie is on his gluten-free diet as well as being egg- and dairy-free, his talking has really come on. He has been really extrememly vocal today and his two most commonly used words are 'cake!' and 'biscuits!' which he always says with an exclamation mark. Today he has added a new word in response to my telling him there were no biscuits, which is 'bake!' So bake we did, some gingerbread men and Lachie's personal favourite, gingerbread cows. As Robert said this afternoon, 'just because they're dairy-free doesn't mean they can't be cow-shaped'.
When I started gluten-free baking I steered clear of flour blends and was mixing various flours as we do for our bread. But I am now a convert to Dove Farm flour blends which just seem to be brilliant. For these biscuits I use the self-raising version as the original recipe included bicarbonate of soda, and it seems to work really well.

Gingerbread cows (Gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free)

2oz dairy-free margarine
2oz soft light brown sugar
2oz syrup
7oz gluten-free self-raising flour
1 tsp ground ginger

Cream together the margarine and sugar until it turns light and soft. Mix in the remaining ingredients until they form a dough - this is hard work and everything goes worryingly crumbly for a while. Pop the dough in the fridge for 10 minutes.
Roll out the cooled dough on a gluten-free floured surface to about 4mm (I always have to remember to flour the rolling pin too or the rolling pin picks up the dough!) and cut out whatever shapes you would like. We favour cows and men. Arrange the biscuits on a greased baking tray and bake for 7 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. Our cows are usually just turning brown around the ankles at this stage. Cool on a wire rack and enjoy eating your herd.

Lachie took some of these biscuits to share with Hamish when we picked him up from school.

Fruit Crumble

Both my boys have been ill and I am trying to feed them up, meaning puddings at tea time are essential. Our most frequent pudding is fruit crumble, the favourite being blackberry and apple. We have both of these growing in our garden and I freeze them away in the autumn to keep us going through the winter. Sadly we have now run out so I'm now using frozen summer fruits from the supermarket which are very nice but don't give you that satisfied feeling of knowing they came from just outside the back door. Crumble is a brilliant gluten-free pudding and I find that there is really no difference in taste or texture simply substituting rice flour for wheat flour.

Fruit Crumble (gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free)

4 1/2oz rice flour
3oz dairy free margarine
3oz demarara sugar
enough fruit to give a good covering on the bottom of your dish

Rub the margaine into the flour until it goes to crumbs, stir in the sugar and spoon on top of the fruit. Very easy. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes.

On the rare occaision that there is any left over, Lachie likes to have cold crumble for breakfast the next day!

Cinnamon muffins for a cold day

It is freezing in Skipton this week. The boys and I have been venturing out for short walks in the morning and spending the afternoon at home with the stove on. This afternoon Lachie and I baked these yummy muffins for a mid-afternoon snack. Don't be put off by the prunes - chopped up they are just like jumbo raisins!

Cinnamon muffins (gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free)

8oz gluten-free self raising flour (we use Dove Farm)
5oz light muscovado sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 banana, mashed
1/4 pint soya milk
6 tbsp sunflower oil
6oz prunes, chopped

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl and beat the milk, oil and banana together in a jug. Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix lightly. Stir in the chopped prunes. If the mixture seems a bit thick I add a drop more milk - maybe this depends on the banana?! Spoon the mixture into muffin cases in a tray. I can usually get at least 10 muffins out of this mixture. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

A Chocolate Yule Log

The hardest aspect for me of Lachie's food allergies is that he doesn't understand. It's one thing telling a four year old that something will make them sick, but when you're two it is a hard concept to grasp. He wants to have whatever his big brother is having, especially if it's some sort of pudding. Nigella Lawson has a recipe in her book Feast for a Buche de Noel (chocolate log) which I thought looked like a lovely thing to make for the children to have on Christmas Day. This recipe uses a flourless sponge so is already gluten-free and is really easy to adapt for a dairy-free diet. But of course a flourless sponge is heavy on the egg so it was out of bounds for Lachie. I should say now that this recipe will either show my dedication to helping Lachie feel like part of the gang or reveal me to be crazy. Basically, I made Nigella's Buche de Noel, but added a two inch extension to the log made of our favourite gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free chocolate cake (see the snowflake cake), and an extra side branch, and then covered the whole thing in the same icing. It looked fab, the children loved it, and Lachie was convinced he was having what everybody else was having. We will definitely be making another one next year!

Chocolate Yule Log (gluten-free, dairy-free, and with an egg-free extension!)


For the sponge
6 eggs separated
150g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
50g cocoa

For the icing
175g dairy-free dark chocolate
250g icing sugar
225g dairy-free margarine (Nigella's recipe uses butter)
1 tsp vanilla extract (Nigella uses 1 tbsp)


For the egg-free extension
1 chocolate cake made to the recipe given in the Snowflake Chocolate Cake recipe


To make the sponge it helps to have two really big bowls. In one bowl whisk the egg whites, adding 50g of the sugar when they are foamy, and keeping whisking until they are forming soft peaks. In the other bowl whisk the yolks and the remaining sugar until they are pale. Fold in the sugar and vanilla extract. Fold into the yolk mixture a couple of spoons of egg white. Fold in the rest of the egg whites a third at a time. Pour the mixture into a swiss roll tin lined with greaseproof paper and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. After the cake has cooled a bit tip it out onto another sheet of greaseproof.

To make the icing first melt the chocolate and leave it to cool. Cream together the icing sugar and dairy-free margarine and mix in the chocolate and vanilla extract.

To assemble the log, spread icing onto the sponge and roll it up as tightly as you can. (If you want to trim the edges of the sponge you can use these pieces to make branches.) I then iced this cake completely before adding the egg-free extensions and branches (to ensure there was a layer of icing separating the two types of cake).

For the gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free extensions, cut pieces from the chocolate cake of the correct size to fit on the end of the log, or to make branches, and then cover these too in icing.) I found I had plenty of icing to do this following Nigella's quantities.

For a snow effect, dust the log with icing sugar. And we added Father Christmas on his sledge.

Daily bread

Lachie is a bit of a toast monster - he could easily eat 3 or 4 slices for breakfast. So when Lachie went gluten-free we knew that a replacement for ordinary bread had to be found, and we thought we would make our own. It turns out that making gluten-free bread is really easy. Having said that, I don't actually make it, my husband does. Robert bakes 2 loaves a week for Lachie using the following recipe from the excellent How to Cook for Food Allergies by Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne. I havn't altered the recipe other than reducing the salt, but we always make the nut-free version. There is no need to let the bread rise (no gluten to hold the dough together after rising!), you just mix it and put it in the oven. You do need a bit of organisation however - all those different flours! We have made a few variations on the flour mixture when something runs out! Tapioca flour seems to be hard to come by at the moment, I don't know why. We buy a couple of bags when we see it in the health food shop. Rice flour, cornflour and now potato flour can all be bought in Tescos. Xanthum gum powder can be bought in health food shops.

Gluten-free bread (also dairy-free and egg-free)

6 oz potato flour
4 oz cornflour
2 oz tapioca flour
2 oz rice flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp soft dark brown sugar
2 tsp xanthum gum powder
2 sachets dried yeast
1 tbsp rice bran
2 tbsp sunflower oil
12 floz warm water

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and add the oil to the water. Add most of the liquid to the dry ingredients and start mixing. The mixture will be very gloopy but should suddenly come together. Add the rest of the liquid if you need to - you are aiming for a mix that will just drop off a spoon. Beat everything together well. We usually add all of the liquid - Robert thinks the amount of liquid required might vary according to the batch of cornflour.

Spoon the mixture into a greased 2 lb loaf tin and smooth flat. Bake for 45 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. Cool the bread on a wire rack.

Lachie likes this bread as toast for breakfast cut into bite sized pieces with marmite and, strangely, a Dove Farm chocolate star on the top of each piece. At lunch time he just has it with houmus.

Edited to say that I think this needs a bit more liquid so that the batter is like a cake mix and really will drop off a spoon - see the post on 23rd January for the spectacular results!

A Snowflake Chocolate Cake

This afternoon Lachie and Hamish helped me to make our favourite chocolate cake. I have adapted this recipe from when we were just egg- and dairy-free and works brilliantly with gluten-free flour. This cake is delicious and you would never guess what it didn't have in it!

Chocolate Cake (gluten-free, egg-free and dairy-free)

For the cake
10 oz gluten-free self raising flour (we have been using Dove Farm)
3 tbsp cocoa
6 oz caster sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 pint soya milk
5 oz dairy free margarine
3 tbsp golden syrup

Mix together the flour, cocoa and sugar and rub in the margarine until it looks like crumbs. Mix the bicarbonate of soda with the milk and pour over the crumbs along with the golden syrup. Beat all the ingredients together until you have a runny batter with lots of little lumps. Divide between two greased 8 inch cake tins and bake for 25 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. I find that vegan cakes are best left to cool in the tin.

Icing
To ice the cake I make up a bowl of chocolate 'butter cream' icing. Cream icing sugar and cocoa into dairy free margarine. I don't measure this, I just keep adding and tasting until it looks and tastes right. I use the icing to sandwich the two cakes together and cover the top.

The snowflake
I was feeling festive this evening and decided to surprise the boys with a snowflake on the top of the cake. I used a paper snowflake we had make for the window, laid it over the cake and dusted with icing sugar. Take away the paper and there is your snowflake pattern. It made the boys smile!