Going along with the Princess thing...

     Daring Baker challenge 3 days before Disney...this is insane!  Packing and cleaning and cooking for the grandmothers stuck here watching unruly toddler boy, cooking and shopping for that same unruly boy and his allergies, making princess costumes, talking to Disney food people, oh and I have a job too...arggh!  But lucky for me, I could get points with the girls by adapting this month's Tuile Challenge to fit the princess obsession of the moment.

      In all honesty, ever since I got my first Silpat 2 years ago...I have been wanting to make tuiles. Tuiles are the reason to own a Silpat...and I've now justified the purchase! This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.  

     Adapting the recipe to be egg and dairy-free was pleasantly easy, I just substituted dairy-free margarine for the butter and flax eggs for the egg whites.  One of the great things about this recipe is the infinite adaptability in style and timing.  You can make any shape you can imagine, if your fingers can take the heat.  The dough can sit in the fridge for days, so you can bake them up when you want....and they hold up for a few days after baking too!   Check out the other Daring Bakers and their creativity, I am in awe!

Dairy and Egg-Free Tuiles

(Adapted from “The Chocolate Book”, by Dutch Master chef Angélique Schmeinck.

¼ cup softened dairy-free margarine ( I used Fleischmann's Unsalted Margarine)
½ cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 pinch of salt
1 flax egg (instructions below)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
Food coloring of your choice

1.) Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, cream margarine, sugar and vanilla to a fluffy paste.
2.) Make the flax egg while the margarine creams. To make a proper flax egg, grind 1 tablespoon of flax seeds in a spice grinder to a fine powder. Mix with 3 tablespoons of warm water and beat the heck out of it with a beater or an immersion blender... it will get all gummy and thick...weirdly like an egg white.
3.) Add the flax egg to the creamed sugar mixture.
4.) Slowly add the flour to the bowl and mix well, but not too much.
5.) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up. The batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week, take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it.
6.) Make a cute stencil out of cardboard or plastic.
7.) Find that Silpat that has been patiently waiting for this day, or line a baking sheet with parchment.
8.) Spread the batter thinly onto the pan using the stencil, don't make the cookies too close.
9.) Bake in a preheat oven at 350 for 5-8 minutes, until the edges just get browned.
10.) Quick, quick...shape them before they harden! Wear some plastic gloves if you are tender-fingered.

I wish I could say my girls noticed the unintended similarity to a scene in one of their favorite books, but it was my husband who immediately exclaimed..."those look just like the Fancy Nancy Sundaes!"

I got my templates from Family Fun, made them a bit smaller and cut them into the cover of one of my unused Mead notebooks... Aurora, Belle, and Snow White.

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Princesses without the Peas!

The itch-free Princess Dresses! All seams covered, stretch velvet tops, the skirts are lined with cotton!  Tink and Cinderella are packed away as a surprise for next week!

Peanut-free loot!

     Our trip to Disney World was the perfect excuse for me to make my first purchase from Peanut Free Planet to stock up on snacks and other fun stuff.  Despite the fact that we live in the second largest city in Michigan, the closest Whole Grocer is still 2 hours away...so this stuff is hard to come by.  

     All their products are peanut free, and they further organize things into other allergen-free categories.  My favorites so far are the NoNuttin granola bars and caramel granola clusters, Gimbal's every flavor jellybeans and Amanda's Own princess chocolate lollypops.  They also sell individual cups of Sunbutter for dipping pretzels and the actual Sunbutter sunflower seeds for baking!  Shipping is free over $100...which is not a difficult number to reach once you start poking around and planning to stock up for Valentines Day lovin' or Easter baskets.  

     The NoNuttin company also has their own website and you can order a sample pack of everything they make for $10 with free shipping, which we did before investing all that cash in granola bars!  All their products are great, but I think their granola bars price out at...gulp...$1.30 or so a bar....which is why the allergic kid gets those and her non-allergic sister gets the cheaper option of Canadian-made Quaker chewy granola bars (I guess Quaker in Canada has peanut-free facilities, but the bars still have dairy so not appropriate for the allergic kid).

Happy little Belle!

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Making the Magic Happen

Sorry about the skimpy blogging lately, we're heading to Disney World in 2 weeks...and with any seemingly simple event involving an allergic kid....there are so many things to think about.  The food stuff has been an evolving process, picking restaurants, talking to chefs, reading menus, finding an online grocery delivery service for the hotel, buying snacks.   Gina Clowes, over at allergymoms.com had a great article this summer on food allergies at Disney, so that has helped a lot.

The part that has me laughing right now is the Problem With Princess Dresses.  Most normal people can go to Toys R Us or the Disney Store and come away with a princess dress for about $20 or so.  I tried that option, and quickly realized the rashiness that results from such sparkly scratchy dresses...and it's not even warm and humid here!  So here I am, sewing itch-free princess dresses...carefully covering all seams, lining with cotton and velvet, saving the shimmery pretty fabric for the outer layers....where is that fairy godmother when I need her!

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New Year's Resolution: More Family Meals

     I guess I need to clarify my intent to create more "Family Meals" this year.   At MOPS a few years ago, a speaker talked about the Family Meal, simply defined as sitting together in the evening to eat....basically anything...hot dogs, pizza, mac and cheese....and gave a packet of sample recipes for casseroles full of cream-of-something-soup, sour cream, random meat, random starch, topped with yellow cheese and a crisp item of your choosing (chips, crackers, breadcrumbs, french onions) ... 375 for an hour in a 9 x 13 Pyrex pan ( or Anchor Hocking for the truly Dutch). The purpose of that kind of Family Meal is clearly social/emotional and not nutritional.

     My biggest challenge to the Family Meal is obviously the allergy thing: finding the rare meal that is safe for all the kids (dairy, egg and nut-free for Brynn...all that plus wheat and barley-free for the boy), but is also something I actually want to eat too.  The social aspect of sitting together to eat is not the problem, finding foods we can all eat, without cooking 3 meals to serve at once...that's the problem. 

     Unfortunately, all too often, our Family Meal ends out happening in stages: We sit with the kids and snack on cheese and olives while they eat chicken nuggets and tater tots  (Tyson's nuggets for the older kids, Ian's for the boy), then the kids watch a movie while the adults eat the good stuff: braised short ribs, polenta and broccoli rabe.  I know! It's horrible! But I get tired of adapting recipes sometimes...and really want butter in my polenta, cream in my mashed potatoes and parmesan in my risotto. 

     But this year, I vow to do better...and pray that the 18 month old outgrows the wheat allergy soon...that's really the only allergy right now that makes me cranky. So on to my favorite Family Meal!!

This recipe is used a lot around here because the kids love it, I love it, and it works for baby and the older kids.  Anytime I don't have to cook a 1.) baby meal 2.) kid meal and 3.) adult meal...this is good.  This comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, now sadly out-of-print: Ready When You Are by Martha Rose Shulman.  The ingredients are so simple (only 4!), the results... amazing.

Roast Lemon Chicken with Honey Glaze and Sweet Potatoes

One 3 1/2-4 1/2 pound chicken, giblets removed

1 cup fresh lemon juice ( I sometimes use the frozen Minute Maid juice, never ReaLemon, it tastes like chemicals)

4-6 small, thin sweet potatoes, scrubbed and pierced a few times with a knife and rubbed with olive oil (too big and they are still crunchy when the chicken is done)

1/4 cup honey

Salt and Pepper


1.) The day or morning before you plan to make this, place the chicken and the lemon juice in a gallon ziplock bag, put the whole thing in a 9 x 9 pan and let it marinate in the fridge for 8-24 hours, turning occationally.

2.) Preheat oven to 450. Drain chicken, pat dry and season with salt and pepper. Place in a large roasting pan, breast side down, with the sweet potatoes. If you look longingly at the All Clad roasting pan, but only have a 9 x 13 Pyrex and everything won't fit (like me) put the sweet potatoes in their own pan.

3.) Roast for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 and roast for 45 minutes. Don't open the oven or anything.

4.) Remove from oven, baste the chicken and potatoes all over with the honey. Flip the chicken to breast side up and baste again. Rotate the potatoes too and baste with some of the chicken drippings.

5.) Roast breast side up for 30-45 minutes, basting occationally, until the chicken is beautiful golden brown and an instant read thermometer in the thigh reads 180 F.

6.) Move the chicken to a platter to rest, tent with foil.

7.) Make a gravy from the drippings by pouring the drippings into a saucepan with 1 cup of water and 2-3T of cornstarch, bring to a boil until thick. Add salt or add extra thickening as needed.

8.) Hopefully, you used small enough potatoes that they are done at the same time, if you didn't believe me, and used huge potatoes, they may still be crunchy...put back in the oven at 400 until done.

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