Dinosaur Birthday Cake – Egg & Dairy Free

July 16, 2008 at 7:16 pm | In Allergy Related, Eating In, Feedmeallergyfree | Leave a Comment
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dinosaur cake

dinosaur cake

At the weekend, Taran had a party to celebrate his 3rd birthday and and once again, I decided to attempt a homemade birthday cake.

This year’s theme was a dinosaur and I’ve jotted down the recipe I used below. This recipe is egg free and can also be dairy free by simply using soya milk instead of cow’s milk and dairy free spread instead of butter. As the dinosaur mould was rather large I just doubled the quantities and it turned out just right!

Ingredients:
110g/4oz dark 70% cocoa chocolate, broken into pieces
85g/3oz butter (or dairy free spread)
150ml/5fl oz golden syrup
110g/4oz self-raising flour
1 heaped tsp baking powder
50ml/2fl oz milk (or soya milk)
1/2 tsp salt

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C or 350 degrees F and line a 20cm/8 inch baking tin.
2. Place the chocolate, dairy-free spread and golden syrup in a pan. Gently melt together, stirring continuously.
3. In a bowl, add the flour, baking powder and salt.
4. Pour the melted chocolate mixture and milk into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix together until the mixture is smooth.
5. Pour the mixture into the baking tin and place on the middle shelf for 10-15 mins or until the mixture is just set in the middle.
6. Allow to cool and then turn out the cake.

I then cheated a bit and bought some ready made icing and icing pens to decorate!

Newsletter – April 2008

April 11, 2008 at 10:02 pm | In Allergy Related, Feedmeallergyfree, Interesting Products | Leave a Comment
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I’ve just finished the latest edition of the Feed me allergy free newsletter – so if you fancy a read go to http://www.feedmeallergyfree.co.uk/articles/newsletter-april2008.pdf.

 

Good News – No longer allergic to milk!

March 27, 2008 at 3:26 pm | In Allergy Related, Eating In, Feedmeallergyfree, General: Day-to-day | Leave a Comment
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The good news…Taran has outgrown his milk allergy!! Hurray!

We also had some slight bad news. According to the skin prick tests, Taran looked like he had also outgrown his egg allergy. However, they did the lip test on him (by rubbing a bit of egg on his lips) and he reacted. It went all red and came up in hives confirming that he is still currently allergic to egg.

So what happened at the milk challenge?
Yesterday, we spent the day at our local hospital undergoing a milk food challenge. They had already conducted a lip test (see previous post) to which he’d had no reaction. They started off by taking a couple of observations – blood pressure, heart rate etc.

 They then gave him a small amount of milk to drink (5ml) and observed to see if he had any reaction. There was no reaction and after twenty minutes they took all the observations again. They repeated several times whilst increasing the amounts of milk that he had to drink – 10ml, then 30ml and then 150ml.

Thankfully, Taran had no reaction at all to the milk and his observations remained the same. They continued to observe him for a couple of hours after the tests to see if there were any changes.

So great news, no longer allergic to milk. We saw the consultant who told us that we could start to introduce milk into his diet straight away. Often children who undergo food challenges, don’t actually like the taste of the food they have to test. But thankfully Taran really enjoyed drinking the milk so this morning for breakfast he got stuck straight in and had cornflakes with normal milk!

Food Challenges – Milk First!

February 25, 2008 at 12:24 pm | In Allergy Related, Feedmeallergyfree | Leave a Comment

Milk Challenge 

Back in January, Taran had an appointment at the hospital for a repeat skin prick test and the results were very promising. They showed that he was growing out of his milk and egg allergies – milk in particular. So it was decided that he would undergo a milk challenge and the first part of that challenge was today!

This morning I took him to the children’s ward at the hospital for them to perform a lip test. This simply involved dabbing a bit of milk onto the corner of his lip area. Before doing this, the nurse took a few key measurements such as blood pressure and heart beat and repeated them at the end. It was all very straight forward and Taran had no reaction to the milk. A good sign!

The next step is for a full milk challenge. This is booked in for the end of March and will involve a whole day on the ward with Taran actually being given milk to drink.

We will obviously have to wait and see but so far so good!

Latest Newsletter – Christmas Edition

December 3, 2007 at 4:56 pm | In Allergy Related, Feedmeallergyfree | Leave a Comment

The latest edition of the Feed me allergy free newsletter is now available on the Feed me allergy free website.

Fruit Slice         It focuses on all things Christmassy and includes
         a fab fruit slice recipe which makes a great 
         alternative to christmas cake.

 

Article on Feed me allergy free

September 12, 2007 at 7:39 pm | In Allergy Related, Feedmeallergyfree | Leave a Comment

A great article on Feed me allergy free appears in this month’s Generation One Magazine which is a community magazine for the Hull and East Riding area.

I’m really pleased with the write-up and hope that it enables more families with food allergic children to discover the Feed me allergy free website. Generation One article

To read the article (page 20), click here to go to the Generation One magazine website.

Allergy Free Birthday Cake

July 10, 2007 at 7:41 pm | In Allergy Related, Eating In, Feedmeallergyfree | 3 Comments

Well, it was Taran’s birthday party on Saturday and he had a fantastic time. He really enjoyed being the centre of attention and definitely knew it was his party!!

And as promised here are the photos of his allergy free chocolate birthday cake that I made for his party. As you can probably tell, I’m not an expert cake maker but all the same I think I did a fairly good job. To make the cake, I simply used the chocolate cake recipe from my Feed me allergy free recipe book and doubled the quantites.

Below – plain chocolate cake

Chocolate Cake - before decoration

Below - a work in progress!!

Chocolate Cake - work in progress

And the finished cake!

Chocolate Cake - Finished

Sesame Allergy – beware of processed foods!

June 4, 2007 at 12:01 pm | In Allergy Related, Eating In, Feedmeallergyfree, In the news | 2 Comments

On Saturday, I received my June edition of the Foods Matter magazine.

There are a number of interesting articles in the magazine and one of them covers the International Foods Exhibition that took place in March. Apparently, in a seminar on “Flavour Trends”, speaker Carla Ogeia of Mintel, said that the use of sesame in processed food products was increasing greatly and would continue to do so for some time. This is obviously of concern to those allergic to sesame.

Taran is allergic to sesame but I must admit it is one of his allergies that I tend to forget about. All his food is homemade apart from things like the Organix snacks and Peter Rabbit rice pasta which are designed for babies/toddlers and so don’t contain any sesame. Therefore I don’t really have to worry about it. 

The Feed me allergy free recipe book is also free from sesame. But again I didn’t think to mention it on the front cover with all the other exclusions – something I must amend on the next addition!!  I suppose it’s because, even before Taran, I never really included sesame in my cooking apart from when I’ve occassionally made houmous and added tahini (sesame paste).

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting fact and one that I must remember if I do start to feed Taran any processed foods when he gets older.

Fantastic range of organic baby clothing on www.Feedmeallergyfree.co.uk

May 22, 2007 at 7:41 pm | In Allergy Related, Feedmeallergyfree, Interesting Products | Leave a Comment

I’ve just added a fantastic range of organic baby clothing, including day playsuits and rompers, to www.Feedmeallergyfree.co.uk. I hope that visitors to my site will also think they look gorgeous!

Why do I feel they fit in with my allergy site? Well, when my son was a baby and before his allergies were under control, he suffered quite badly from eczema. Consequently, he spent a lot of time in baby suits and rompers as opposed to “proper” clothes as I thought they were more comfortable on his sensitive skin.

I often found it difficult to find suitable day rompers which didn’t make it look like he’d spent the whole day in his PJ’s! And I thought there must be other mothers in the same situation.

The range of baby clothing that I’ve decided to stock is certified organic by SKAL and AGRECO. SKAL is the inspection body for organic production in the Netherlands and they issue the EKO symbol which is used throughout Europe whilst AGRECO is the inspection body for organic production methods.

So why go organic? Organic cotton is produced entirely free of chemical pesticides and therefore without the risks that such chemicals pose to human health and the environment.

Personally, I like to buy organic clothing for my son. A baby’s skin is 5 times thinner than adult, allowing toxins to penetrate the skin much more easily. In addition, all the garments on the site are formaldehyde, heavy metals and other harmful additives.

So please do have a look at www.Feedmeallergyfree.co.uk.

New Look for www.Feedmeallergyfree.co.uk

May 22, 2007 at 7:32 pm | In Feedmeallergyfree | Leave a Comment

I’m pleased to say that my new site at www.Feedmeallergyfree.co.uk has gone live.

The original site was launched in January this year and I decided to redesign it with the help of a professional to bring it more inline with my recipe book Feed me allergy free.

The site still contains all of the great information of the old site including numerous articles and newsletters. The only difference is that they have been put under one heading – Resources – for easier navigation. In addition, I’ve expanded the shop area to include some fabulous organic baby clothing.

I hope you like the new look!

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