Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Sorry for not posting sooner, I barely seem to have time to blink at the moment, let alone blog.  Cutting dairy, egg and peanuts out of my diet didn't alleviate Ash's symptoms.  We went back to the hospital last week and were told that the blood tests had shown that he was anaemic, deficient in Vitamin D and also allergic to soya and wheat.  He was barely allergic to wheat so the hope was that he would tip into tolerance, which is apparently common for babies his age.  He didn't. He had an episode of swelling round his mouth after eating a piece of bread and now wheat has been removed from his diet too.  I'm truly hoping that it is the last piece of the puzzle and that the intense itching, eczema, diarrhoea and general unsettled behaviour he displays fade away.

So... To recap, he can't have dairy, eggs, soya, wheat and nuts.  And his twin brother can.  Cooking under these restrictions is so difficult.  I'm constantly terrified of cross contamination.  I've just finished making gluten free bread with Orgran no egg and oat milk.  I've been told that Ash should be able to handle other grains.  I certainly hope so because there is oat and barley in the bread.  I don't really have any choice but to make the bread myself because I can't find any gluten free bread on the shelves that doesn't contain egg.  Plus gluten free is not the same as wheat free and the whole thing is very confusing.  This is what the "bread" looks like at the moment:

Not very inspiring, is it?  I feel like I should write "bread" instead of bread.  You don't knead it, which is different but certainly saves some time.  I have to leave it an hour to rise.  Whatever I think of it, the important thing is that if Ash likes it then that is all that matters.  I'll be looking hard for tips and recipes to improve the taste and texture.  I've made this from the Doves Farm white bread mix.

I'll update later to let you know how it turns out.

Update

Yeah... hmm.  Well, it smells fairly strongly of vinegar but quite nice although it's very flat.  I followed the instructions carefully, used the right bread tin size, and it doubled in size at least over the hour I left it but... not much good for sandwiches.  If memory serves, the gluten free loaves in the supermarket never look particularly big but certainly not this flat.  More research needed.

Christmas morning muffins

I try to accommodate all breakfast requests on Christmas morning and Phil, my husband, asked for a continental breakfast this year.  We lived in Holland for ten years and he used to treat me to a delivered breakfast hamper on my birthday.  A guy dressed in a fluffy white dressing gown would show up with a huge box filled with orange juice, tea, bread rolls, croissants, hard boiled eggs, yoghurts, flavoured sprinkles (called hagelslag - love and miss them now we're back in England!) and cheeses, jams... you get the idea.  I've never seen this service offered in the UK and it's such a pity.  I've bought most of the products needed for the perfect continental breakfast and unfortunately I can't have many of them!  It's so annoying that gluten-free bread is made with egg and most normal supermarket bread contains soya.  Ah, well. I've found some Italian-style rolls I can have and coconut yoghurt.  I've also made some Christmas morning muffins, adapted from a recipe of Nigella's.  Again, I haven't made these before.  I swapped out the milk and replaced it with unsweetened almond milk and replaced the egg with Orgran no egg.  I didn't have any vegetable oil so I used sunflower oil.  The recipe required me to zest and juice two clementines.  I think I would have had more success trying to bottle smoke.  They were so soft and squishy and this was the aftermath...

Hopefully it will be worth it.  They smelled delicious when cooking and this is the result...

A couple of cook books arrived today - The Food Allergy Mama's Baking Book and The Food Allergy Mama's Easy, Fast Family Meals.  Both by Kelly Rudnicki.  A lady with five children, one with food allergies.  She could be me if I was a talented cook from the US instead of a slovenly Brit with questionable baking skills.  I have only flipped through them so far and I'm particularly excited about the recipes in the baking book.  Kelly commonly suggests rice milk in her recipes so I'll have to get hold of some of that.  I hope the muffins turn out ok with unsweetened almond milk.  I would have thought it would be ok for a Christmassy recipe?  I don't have a fluffy white dressing gown but will serve the breakfast tomorrow with a slightly tatty blue dressing gown and a happy smile :)  Merry Christmas to all!

Update

We just got back from bowling and being thrashed by the kids at air hockey.  My eyes fell upon the muffins as soon as I walked through the door and I had to try one.  Delicious doesn't do it justice, and I am a very severe critic of my own cooking.  It was light, moist, sweet and very attractive when sliced in two thanks to the zest and dried cranberries.  The only problem is, as Phil pointed out, I didn't make enough.  I can't expect all my allergy-friendly baking attempts to be this successful but this is a great start.

Christmas cake

Well the cake is now cooling in the tin.  It's a chocolate fruitcake.  I should point out that this is the first year I have tried this recipe so I have no idea if the family will like either the original or the adapted version.  I had a panic before I started because I realised that I had bought unsweetened almond milk.  It seemed like the right choice at the time but there is also sweetened almond milk and I had no idea which would be the most suitable.  Cow's milk is naturally sweet but how sweet is unsweetened almond milk?  Then I realised that the recipe didn't call for milk at all and I was off the hook.  All I needed to replace was the butter for Stork margarine and the three eggs for a product called Orgran no egg.  With the first cake, I had omitted the alcohol and replaced it with cherry juice because I was cooking for little people and not all the alcohol burns off with cooking.  Because the second cake is purely for the grownups (Ash is too little for Christmas cake this year!) I decided to put the 75ml of brandy in.  The mix seemed quite dense when I spooned it into the tin and I can't remember if that was the case with the first cake.

Next year I'll need to find a replacement for marzipan because Ash needs to avoid all nuts.  Any suggestions?  It is such a distinctive taste.  I have been told that I only need to avoid peanuts while I am breastfeeding and no other nuts.

So this is what the cake looks like right now:

I should probably also have pointed out before I started that I am not a particularly good baker.  I'm a passable cook but when it comes to baking I have mixed success.  I don't think I've ever made scones that have risen.  While I was waiting for the cake to cook I iced the first cake, loosely following this recipe.  I covered the cake with marzipan and fondant icing and then shop bought sugarcraft gingerbread men.  I had intended to make the candy cane decorations myself, I'd bought coloured fondant icing ready, but the twins needed my attention and so I cheated and used a festive cake frill I found in an old box of Christmas decorations.  In the past I've only ever covered a Christmas cake with royal icing and spiked it up to look like a snow scene so this is progress for me.  I really should take a course in cake decorating, though.  If I ever get some time...  ha!  Anyway, here's the finished first cake:

The second cake will be covered in royal icing so I don't mix the two up.  All suggestions and opinions gratefully received but please be gentle with me!  Importantly, the children were impressed.  Bless them, they're always very appreciative of my baking attempts, even when I order them out of the kitchen in a cloud of icing sugar and angry outbursts directed at my recipe books.

Hello!

Hello! My name is Catherine and I'm the proud mum of five little boys. Yes... five. Feel free to say "Wow!", "Five?", "How do you manage?", "Enough for a football team!", "Don't you have a television?!?" or anything else that takes your fancy. I'll wait for you. My youngest are eight month old baby twins and the younger, Ash, has food allergies.  I'll pause again here to post a picture of Ash and his twin Leo, because who can resist seeing newborn twins?  Ash is on the left.

He developed eczema at 5 months old and a few weeks afterwards he had a severe allergic reaction to a dry spoon with milk residue on it that he pressed to his cheek. His face swelled up and his left eye swelled closed and we ended up at paediatric A&E.  Allergy tests followed. He's allergic to egg, milk and peanuts. His reaction is so severe to even minute traces of allergens and his skin so sensitive that I need to follow an exclusion diet to carry on breastfeeding him.  I have to cut out egg, dairy, soya and peanuts.

I found all this out at Christmas, after I'd made the Christmas cake and ordered the Christmas cheese board. I am in mourning for my Christmas cheese board and feel the need to wander around wearing a black armband. Nevertheless, I'm up to the challenge and thought it would be fun to blog my attempts to cook allergy-friendly food for my family. Tonight I am attempting to make another Christmas cake, adapting the original recipe to remove the egg, milk and butter and replacing them with an egg substitute product, almond milk and Stork margarine.  I'll let you know how it turns out!