Tag Archives: eggfree

Banana Bread! (eggfree, glutenfree)

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It took social distancing and Covid19 to get me blogging again I guess. Trying not to waste and we live in banana land! So, off I went, scrolling for recipes that are gluten free, egg free, corn free and use bananas. None of the recipes suited me. Im not a fan of powder egg replacer or flax egg. Both banana and chickpea flour can be used as egg replacer right? So. Time to make my own recipe. I will spare you all the details. There was Bread 1, 2 and 3. In the end bread 3 won hands down and this is what Im sharing with you today 🙂

Dont be afraid to experiment, so many recipes call for things we may not have at home. Half the recipe here is bananas anyway so dont stress to much if you add or remove or adjust elsewhere!

You need:

  • 5 Bananas (bananas here are pretty small so you can absolutely use less if you have big ones)
  • 3 tbsp sugar or other sweetener.
  • 1dl chickpea flour
  • 1.5 dl gf flour blend (switch the half for gf oats if you prefer)
  • 1 dl milk
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • Cinnamon, to taste. I used about half a tbsp
  • OPTIONAL extra – seeds, gf oats, raisins, whatever you like. Ive done batches with raisins and seeds on top and some with oats inside and all of it works! You dont need any of it, but you can absolutely use your imagination here. Perhaps chocolate chips?

Mash your bananas well. In all my version the bread that turned out the best I used my electric whisk to get all the banana lumps out and the bread turned out the fluffiest, so mash a bit, then get that whisk out!

Add all other ingredients and mix well. Yes, you can do it in any order you like, its absolutely ok!

The bananas make this cake (hateword number 1) moist enough on its own, so I added no oil to the batter. I did put some oil on my parchment paper though.

Pop it all in a bread tin and place in a 185 degree (pre heated) oven for 45 minutes.

Hot tip, banana bread is BETTER the day after you make it. If you absolutely cant wait though, at least let it cool down before you cut it. All my banana breads end up looking a little burnt, I think its just the caramelising of the bananas? They dont taste burnt 🙂

Enjoy!

My top 6 #Back2School items for an allergy kid!

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So, Im one of those mums remember? (Eye roll as you see fit). As one of those mums back to school is a little bit harder, and a little bit more stressful. Whether you are new to the allergy / celiac game or an old timer, my list of must haves may help make your life a teeny bit easier. Aili was diagnosed as a baby, not yet 2 years old, now she is over 7, and making sure I have these allergy must haves around is totally routine.

  1. Gluten Free labels! I stick these on all our lunch box containers, these serve as a great reminder for any teacher or other adult approaching my child and hopefully reminds them to not touch my carefully prepared allergy safe meal. These are from Ladybug Labels and they ship internationally. The labels are dishwasher safe and stay on for a long time. Through the years I tried many different brands and these win hands down. The quality is superb and they are easy to peel off and stick. (http://www.ladybuglabels.com)
  2. Name labels. The last thing I need is for my kids to lose anything (they do, anyway obviously, especially my son, lol), but even worse would be their stuff getting mixed up with someone elses. All their lunch gear including cutlery has a name label. Again I tried many different ones from different companies and these are now my go to every year. Delivery is fast and cheap even for international delivery. I always get the plain label, it sticks well, peels off easily and is dishwasher safe. I still have some labels from when my son was 4 that are stuck on! He’s almost 10 now, thats value for money right there! These are from Easy2name and come in lots of different colours. (https://www.easy2name.com)
  3. Good lunch boxes! My kids bring lunch to school every day and I need something that lasts, is good value for money, and works! It needs to be able to keep my kids food hot or cold, and I need to be able to clean it easily as it goes in to a contaminated environment on a daily basis. We now use only Pottery Barn lunch boxes. The kids get to pick a new one every second September, so we have a few, the first ones we ever got are still alive and kicking (!). We use lunch boxes for every day outings as well, so even though the Pottery barn boxes aren’t exactly cheap, the fact that they are practically indestructible makes them value for money. I pop them in the washing machine regularly to clean them and so far, no problems! Pottery Barn also delivers internationally! (http://www.potterybarnkids.com)
  4. Good Thermoses! My son goes through anti cold food phases, especially in winter. Ive tried so many thermoses its unreal, many of the kids ones are actually good, but to small for my growing boy! I also found many are hard to open once the hot food is in and I prefer my kids to be able to open their own containers. Surprisingly, the best food thermoses I have found are the IKEA ones (or maybe not so surprising, it is SWEDISH after all, haha). They are a great size, easy to open, no flimsy silly seals that come off after 5 uses, and best of all, I can wash them in the dishwasher (they do say not to, but I do and so far no problems). As far as affordability goes they are amazing. The food stays nice and hot too which is obviously great as so many thermoses don’t keep their heat well. (http://www.ikea.com)

     

  5. Baby Wipes and hand wipes. Seriously, you cant get enough of these babies! I keep them in every school bag, in every handbag and each kid has some in school. The baby wipes are sometimes on special and you can get a box with it, cover the box in funky stickers and make it non babyish for school. Alco gel is of no use as it does not kill gluten or other allergens, allergens need to be washed / wiped off! You can get wipes in pretty much any shop. Not all wipes are gluten safe! Johnsons contain no gluten.
  6. A good freezer block. Again, I tried so many. Having had my kids in school in Dubai I may have gotten overly paranoid about the whole cooling issue, but unless you are sending a hot lunch you really do need to worry. These allergy / celiac kids are often more sensitive then others, and the last thing we want is to give our kids food poisoning. I have every size and shape imaginable, these ones are firm favourites as they are slimmer then others, come in pretty colours and stay frozen until lunch time even though they are slimmer. I got these particular ones in Jula. (Yup, another Swedish shop!) (http://www.jula.com)

Anyone want to add anything? Is there something you cant live without for sending your allergic or celiac kid to school? Id love to know 🙂

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Holland & Barrett

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Oh my gosh! WHY Did I not know about this before? A few days ago I stumbled upon Holland & Barrett while searching for gluten free, eggfree cornfree flours. Randomly clicked around and a few minutes later realised they do International delivery! And guess what, it works out cheaper (delivery wise) then amazon to Poland!

Shopping Corn free, gluten free , wheat free and egg free means there is very very little available to us, but after clicking our allergens on the left and reading ingredients I found flour (!!), bread mixes (!!) biscuits and mayo. Anyone else who is corn free on top of gluten free will know my joy. Soups, so mummy can make lunch occasionally without cooking! Gravy, because making it from scratch every time gets so old, sweets, because kinder egg chocolate – however nice it is – gets boring after a while, ice lollies, because, ICE LOLLIES! Fancy teas for mum, because hey, Im worth it!

Then the joy when half the order came just 3 days later!

My joy though is nothing compared to the joy of little madam who got to eat mayo!

And in 2 days there will be more joy when the rest arrives!!

(This is like the kind of jumping up and down screaming joy that only teenage girls feel. Its A W E S O M E!)

Thank you Holland & Barrett, you made my day!

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http://www.hollandandbarrett.com

On a Pancake mission – Day 3

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Its ok that day 3 is almost a year later right? 😀

My sister in law sent me some links to recipes using chick pea water instead of eggs. Pretty cool right? Im sure you have seen some floating around also. Of course being me, I didn’t save any of the recipes she sent me, but who needs a recipe right? I made my own.

This is a small batch (will feed 2-3), double the amounts of flour and milk for a larger batch.

You will need:

  • 1.5 dl gluten free flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1-2 tablespoons of sugar
  • 1.5dl milk
  • 1 egg – or in this case, the “juice” from 1 jar of chick peas.

I used an electric whisk to combine it all and fried my pancakes in butter.

These pancakes were easy to fry, again, careful with the heat, they burn pretty easy! Taste wise they taste like the real thing! Daughter gave them a 5/5 and a visitor (not GF or Egg free) said they taste like pancakes! Cant get much better then that! I really liked these, not doughy at all. My favourite so far!

You cant taste the chickpea juice at all.

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Glutenfree / Eggfree cupcakes

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I use my own blog when I bake because I rarely save or write down recipes. Then the other day, I wanted to bake cupcakes, and I couldn’t find the recipe on the blog! HOW did I not share this with you all?

Its my base cake recipe that I tweak and change as needed and use for everything!

These cupcakes are egg free and you do not need an egg replacer 🙂 I use schär universal mix which is their corn free flour, so the end result is gluten free, egg free and corn free 🙂 You can easily do then dairy free or lactose free also 🙂

You need:

3dl gf flour
2dl sugar
2teaspoons vanilla sugar
2teaspoons baking powder
2dl water
50g butter or substitute

Mix all dry ingreds in a bowl. Melt butter, dont let it cool. Add water to butter and add the liquid to dry stuff. Whisk on high til smooth.

Put in 12 cupcake liners or in 1 large cake tin.

Bake at 225 degrees celsius for 10 minutes for cupcakes and 175 degrees celsius for 40 minutes for large cake.

I skipped the vanilla and added 2 tablespoons of coco powder. Try with cinnamon for Christmas!!

Enjoy!

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Crazy about Dahl

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I have a thing about dahl lately. My kids have a thing about dahl lately too! Sons thing is eating 2-3 bowls of it in one sitting, and daughters thing is refusing to eat any at all. Ho hum, you cant win them all.

Did you know you can make kick ass awesome dahl without having a cupboard full of fancy spices?

Let me teach you my base dahl, then you can play around with it and create your own version.

You will need: (No measurements, sorry, I suck, I know!)

  • Lentils
  • 1 onion
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • tumeric
  • fresh ginger
  • 1-2 tomatoes
  • 1 lemon or lime
  • chilli – optional

for different variations you can add spinnach, chickpeas, paprika, different coloured lentils, carrots…. the sky is the limit 🙂

So, you need lentils. For a starter outer I suggest red lentils. Wash them well and pop them in a large saucepan with water. Id say 2 cups of lentils and 4 of water, add more water if needed. Add about half a teaspoon of tumeric. Bring to a boil and turn the heat down. Red lentils are pretty fast so you can start prepping your other stuff almost straight away.

Finely chop your onion, if you have a kid who thinks onion is poisonous like me, then you can puree the onion in a mini chopper. Its magic. I do this all the time and point blank lie. Works a treat.

Mince your garlic (one of them garlic press majiggys is perfect).

Slice or chop a small amount of chilli, I use red for more colour but use such a minute amount it really doesn’t give much spice at all.  Add the chilli to your garlic pile.

Grate or slice some fresh ginger. I always keep mine in the freezer, so its easy to scrape off the amount I need with a sharp knife. Add the ginger to your garlic and chilli pile.

Cube your tomato. Some say to take the peel off, I dont bother.

Once your lentils are close to done then continue with these final steps.

Add your oil of choice to a frying pan, I use extra virgin olive oil, over low to medium heat fry the onions taking care to not burn them or let them go brown. You want them soft. This will take about 4 minutes. Then add your garlic, chilli, ginger pile. Take extra care now to not let this burn, burnt garlic is not nice.

Once your lentils are done, add all your goodness from your frying pan in to the lentils and also add your tomato. Add salt and squeeze half a lemon or lime in to your dahl.

I like to add a few leaves of baby spinach, it gives such awesome colour.

Once you graduate from this dahl you can start using more grownup lentils and spices if you like 🙂 The one pictured has baby spinach and the lentils are brown and red mix. YUM!

I serve mine with a naughty blob of butter 🙂 You can make it less liquidy and eat it with rice too.

Swedish Coconut Balls!

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Yes, I know, this recipe starts out with you doing a double take and going, “coconut balls?????”

All Swedish kids grew up with coconut balls, its not something parents generally make, instead the kids do it, its an activity and a sweet treat all in one. Although in Swedish, kokos bollar doesnt sound so, eeehm…. wrong? lol

Once upon a time some people called this something else that is very very racist, those people are now being told to say chocolate balls instead. Im not sure what all the hu haa is about to begin with, I have always said coconut balls as have most my friends and family. So coconut balls is what you will call them as well 🙂

This recipe will not work if you cant tolerate oats. Make sure you buy proper glutenfree oats and not any old oats, as normal oats can contain a fair amount of gluten.

You will need:

  • 100g butter, room temperature
  • 1.5 dl sugar
  • 3 tablespoons coco powder
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar (scrap this if you dont have it)
  • 2 tablespoons strong coffee (or water if you dont want to risk making the kids hyper)
  • 5 dl GF oats
  • desiccated coconut, for rolling the balls

The rest is really very simple. Add all the ingredients in a bowl and get your kids to mix it.

Really really mix it, squish, sqash, knead, bash….. until its all mixed. Then roll the mix in to small balls which you then roll in coconut. Once done, refrigerate. Then eat. Or eat as you make it. With a spoon. Then you can skip the coconut too 😛

For a healthier version play around with it, add some coconut oil, chia seeds, less sugar etc. The possibilities are endless.

Enjoy!

Back to school and corn can do one…..

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So upset today. Really really moody and horrid.

Back to school is getting me down, big time. Why? Because only one is going back, and he has to be proper gf for the first time ever, and I need to bake again, and baking corn (and egg free and gluten free) free is a bloomin nightmare, and I dont like baking and Im picking faults right now, with everything.

Why cant I just go to the shop and buy the bread we need? Why cant they just bloody make it??? Im feeling miserable and sorry for myself and I want to scream and stomp my feet and throw things.

I hardly ever have days like this, everything thats been thrown our way these last few years I have taken in my stride and just gotten on with…. but today, I am hard done by, I am miserable and I want our school to have uniforms and I want shops to stock stuff we need and I want to be in Dubai not here and I want someone, anyone to come do my laundry because Im so friggin tired I think I could sleep for a month. Maybe two months.

And Im home sick, and I dont know where home is, or what Im missing and Im so upset and sad.

I want both my kids to go to school tomorrow and I want to be alone sometimes, even just an hour or two. And September is coming, and every September for forever she gets pneumonia, then again in October and November and bla bla bla and I cant do it anymore. Can I please just sleep instead…?

Im not depressed, honest. Tomorrow, or later or whenever I will be just fine. But sometimes I just bottle it all up, for so long and then I need to just let it out, a bit atleast. Then I feel so bad, because there are people out there with real issues, people who have terminal illnesses and others who are fleeing wars and orphans and all sorts, and I feel like such a selfish brat for complaining, I have no right to complain. Its not so bad being me really…. is it?

Deep breaths and all that. Tomorrow will be a better day.

If anyone knows of GF, CF, EF breadmixes, please let me know.

😦

On a pancake mission – day 2

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Ok, nobody tell anyone its been like a week since the last pancake.

Today again I searched and found lots of different egg free pancakes, I wanted one without an egg replaces such as chia or banana or apple sauce, because sometimes, we just dont have all that stuff lying around. I found a few recipes and modified them to make them suit me and obviously make them gluten free.

This one was awesome, but I can imagine the flour is the make or break here, I had to adjust the amount of liquid a few times until I was satisfied, but do note, the batter will be super thick. As the baking powder sits and does its thing, you may even need some more liquid towards the end.

  • 3dl all purpose gf flour (I used a cake one as they are less dense, you may be able to use a bread flour, but start off with a bit less)
  • 4dl milk (I used lactose free)
  • 1tbsp (yup, a WHOLE tablespoon, no joke) baking powder
  • 1tbsp sugar (I tried without this at first, but they kindof need it, try honey if you are a no sugar kindof person)
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • butter or oil for frying, plus a big dollop (about 2tbsp) for the batter

Mix all ingredients together, I never faff around with dry first or whathave you, just whack it in a bowl and blitz with an electric whisk. Like I said, this batter will be thick, its normal, it needs to be.

Start of with a pretty hot pan and lower to medium after the first pancake. Turn each pancake once edges are solid and it almost stopped bubbling.

Verdict: Celiac kiddo loved these, she says they are even better then the previous one which she gave a 5/5. She also says Im a super hero at pancakes and if there was olympics in pancake making I would win (GOD I love my kids!) Big brother says they are super super yummy. He gives them 5/5, he says they were pretty much equally good to the other ones. I also tried even though Im back on a strict low carb diet, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised! You actually can make pancakes without egg and gluten and make them taste like the real thing. My only critique would that they are a tad doughey in the middle. Next time I will try adding some flavour to these, I think they would be great with some chocolate chips or blueberries! I give them a 4/5 and thats comparing them to a pancake with egg! So not bad at all.

Linda

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On a pancake mission – day 1

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Gluten free was easy. Gluten free pancakes taste amazing and I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t love them (they are better then gluten ones, trust me!). But then you go almost completely lactose free and egg free and you sort of sit and wonder, if pancakes are lactose free, egg free and gluten free, are they still pancakes?

Well, after almost a year of being pancake less I decided to go on a pancake mission.

Pancake 1

This is a combination of several recipes I found online, the base recipe(s) had more milk and fancy flavours, they also had gluten. So, this is what I did.

  • 1 ripe banana
  • 1,1/2 dl gf flour (I used a cake one rather then a bread one, but whichever should be fine)
  • 3dl milk (lactose free or whatever tickles your fancy)
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • a pinch of salt
  • a squirt of evoo (or melted butter is fine if that works for you), a bit in the batter and some more for frying

Mash the banana in a bowl and add other ingredients, whisk well so its not to lumpy. Fry as you would a “normal’ pancake.

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Verdict: Well, there is one thing in the world I will not eat or try ever, and its banana. I apparently didn’t like it even as a baby. My mum forced me to eat one in childhood at some point and I promptly puked. I cant even stand the smell. So, I almost died having to mash the thing. Honest. But almost dying is worth it for my kids, so mash I did, with my head turned away and running to the hallway for breathing breaks. I cant tell you what it tastes like. But Celiac kid ate almost all of them! She was screaming and jumping up and down from being so happy about pancakes, she says they are the best everrrrrr! I guess thats a pretty good verdict 🙂 From a cooking point of view Id say they burn pretty easily, I had to keep the temp lower then “normal” pancakes. They were also a bit runny, so a bit bigger then what we usually make, but maybe more flour would have fixed this. Anyhow, daughter gives these a 5/5. I wont rate them as I didnt try, and big brother is in school so missed out on these.

Pancake number 2 tomorrow!

-Linda

EDIT TO ADD: I managed to save 1 little pancake which big brother ate cold after school, he gave it a 6/5 and drew me a “best pancake maker in the world” certificate. I think we are on to a winner!

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