Gluten Free Gingerbread House
Gluten Free Gingerbread House (dairy, egg, nut and gluten free)
Every year one of our Christmas traditions is to make a gingerbread house. This has been challenging to make dairy and egg free as I find they are really not as sturdy as the ones with egg in…but we persevere. When my middle girl came along with her 100 + allergies, we put a house for her in the ‘too hard’ basket sadly. We did try to do one last year but it wasn’t strong enough to stay together for very long and her food aversion issues meant she wouldn’t even taste it. This year though I was determined to make one for her as she is all about being included right now…and slightly braver with trying foods (sometimes!). I’m pleased to say it was a success…the dough worked out well, and it stayed together really nicely. At this point, it hasn’t been tasted at all but I’m optimistic she will try it at some stage! It’s not exactly picture perfect, but Miss 5 wanted to do it ALL HERSELF. Bless.
We just made a really small one as I wasn’t sure if it would hold together, so you would need to double or more the recipe if you want a bigger house. We used a selection of gluten free lollies, marshmallows and candy canes for the decoration.
Candy Cane Marshmallow
Candy Cane Marshmallow
Every year my daughters and I make plates of Xmas cookies to give out to teachers, family and friends. This candy cane marshmallow is one of those spur-of-the-moment concoctions we dreamed up together one night and came about as my daughter just loves anything peppermint, candy canes and marshmallow. So we tried to put all three together!
This Candy Cane Marshmallow recipe is dairy free, egg free, nut free and gluten free if you use gluten free icing sugar.
*Thanks to Edmonds for allowing me to publish their base marshmallow recipe which this concoction is adapted from.
To pipe:
To get the stripy effect, I painted the inside of a piping bag with stripes of red food colouring with a small paintbrush. Then I filled it with the white marshmallow. If you keep piping, the red effect will start to flow through.I pipe it in circular motions so it sits a bit higher, but it doesn’t really matter how you do it.
Cinnamon Christmas Cookies
Cinnamon Christmas Cookies
These Cinnamon Christmas Cookies are my eldest daughter’s favourite cookie. In NZ it is great as Xmas baking season coincides with all the raspberries ripening and fresh raspberry jam! These really are so much better with fresh jam, but don’t worry if you don’t have it..they still taste amazing and make the house smell sensational. These are a feature on our plates of xmas baking for gifts every single year 🙂
Chocolate Peppermint Christmas Slice
Chocolate Peppermint Christmas Slice
Honestly, this is only very loosely Christmas-related but everybody LOVES it! Other than the peppermint-hating crowd….We actually make the slice year round but add these decorations on the top for Christmas. We cut it into slices and add it to our selection of Christmas baking we gift to our wonderful teachers and friends. This recipe is dairy, egg and nut free. It could be made gluten-free by using gluten free chocolate biscuits (I have used the Leda peppermint ones and its quite delicious!), and checking the marshmallows and icing sugar are gluten free.
White Christmas Slice
White Christmas Slice
This White Christmas Slice is not my original recipe (there are many versions floating around the internet such as this one), but one I have adapted slightly to work for our allergy household. It is part of the Christmas cookie/baking selection we make every year to gift to family, friends and teachers. It is dairy, egg, nut, and gluten free so okay for all of my kids and they love it! Truthfully Miss 5 painstakingly picks out all the currants but other than that it’s a huge success. It also keeps for a couple of weeks in sealed containers in the fridge 🙂
Dairy and egg free vanillekipferls
Dairy and egg free vanillekipferls
One of the jobs I absolutely loved doing at Xmas time when I was a pastry chef on cruise ships was making all the Xmas cookies and gingerbread villages. It was about as close to a Northern Hemisphere Christmas as I’ve ever had and it all seemed really magical. So ever since my eldest was old enough to bake with me, we’ve made our own allergy-friendly cookies every year and we gift them to preschool and school teachers and our beautiful friends.
These Dairy and egg free vanillekipferls are an adapted recipe from a dear Austrian chef I worked for many moons ago. Of course we made them with rich butter and eggs so they’ve needed a few changes for our household. The key to these is leaving them in a sealed container of vanilla-enriched icing sugar for a few days. The smell is divine!
Chocolate Cherry Slice-vegan + egg free,dairy free, gluten free, nut free
Chocolate Cherry Slice-vegan + egg free,dairy free, gluten free, nut free
*contains coconut
This slice reminds me of my childhood in Australia eating cherry ripe slices. This was a small window of time in my entire life when I was thought to have grown out of my dairy allergy. I was extremely allergic as a baby, but in fact my symptoms just changed over time and eventually I was able to verbalise how I was feeling inside. The combination of this with many years of sinus infections and generally feeling pretty rubbish led to me excluding dairy from my diet once again. I unfortunately ended up very allergic once again after the birth of my first child, and have had a few anaphylactic reactions since then meaning I try hard to remain dairy free now. This has been relatively straight-forward since all three children are dairy-allergic, until recently when a surprise exposure to dairy in my eldest has found us doing the milk ladder. So we have had to adjust to having small amounts of dairy in the house again. It’s been a challenge for me to stay away from them as I have zero self-restraint, especially when it comes to chocolate biscuits! So, I decided to revisit these bars I made about a year ago for a magazine publication. Hope you love them as much as I do 🙂
Vegan Macarons
These Vegan Macarons are egg, wheat and dairy free but contain nuts.
My daughter turned 10 recently and I made the terrible mistake of asking her what cake she would like. DO NOT DO THIS! 10 year olds are very tech savvy, and next thing I had an email with a picture of THE EXACT CAKE she wanted from Pinterest. ARRRGGGHHH. But I think I kind of delivered…it wasn’t an exact replica but not too bad. It did take quite a while though, and because she is egg and dairy free, I had to be a bit creative. It had macarons on, and I wasn’t optimistic I could pull these off with aquafaba, given how temperamental they can be just with egg, but I’m pleased to announce they worked first try!
Chocolate Rhubarb Tart
Chocolate Rhubarb Tart
Dairy free and Egg free
I absolutely love the Hunter Gatherer Gourmet mixes and I was lucky enough to get one of the chocolate ones at the Food Show recently which had been sitting in my pantry waiting for inspiration to hit me. A dear friend also popped a box of freshly cut rhubarb from her garden (love gardening foodie friends!!!) and was coming over for a playdate so I thought I’d try to pair the two together even though chocolate and rhubarb is a slightly weird combination?? So I created this Chocolate Rhubarb Tart and it was really good! If you can’t get the baking mix or it doesn’t fit with your allergies, you can substitute any brownie mix that works for you.
Dairy, Egg and Gluten Free Chocolate Strawberry Brownies
Dairy, Egg and Gluten Free Chocolate Strawberry Brownies
These Dairy, Egg and Gluten Free Chocolate Strawberry Brownies were made using the super yummy chocolate mix from Hunter Gatherer Gourmet, but I have included a recipe for my own chocolate brownies (recipe here) if you aren’t able to source this or can’t tolerate nuts. It is layered up with a soft strawberry flavoured ‘cream’. It does set firm in the fridge if you want a more structured look, but I love the soft, gloopy, chocolate-strawberry mish-mash.
About me
Photo by Carolyn Jenson www.cjensonimages.com
Funwithallergies is a blog where I hope to show that having children with allergies doesn't mean food and life has to be boring! Â I'm Malena, solo Mum to 3 beautiful girls with varying levels of allergies. Â I have anaphylaxis to spinach as well as a serious dairy and beef allergy, plus I was a chef and pastry chef for more than 10 years prior to having children so I feel I have a lot to offer!Â
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