Keller Family Blog

YEAH we had Pancakes yesterday and they were not only edible but they were good too! Here is the recipe that I used. I will likely tweak a little more as I play with it some more, but it is very similar to our earlier recipe from the USA, but it was the scratch mix of individual flours instead of using any Australian GF Flour blend. Note this makes twice the normal Pancakes of our previous recipe. We did put the Chocolate Chips in most of what we made. The pancakes are on the thin side, but the inside was not wet as in my previous attempts. Needless to say there were NONE left over.

2/3 cup Buckwheat flour
2/3 cup Rice Flour
2/3 cup Besan (Chickpea) Flour
1/4 cup Potato Flour
2 Tablespoon Baking Powder
2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 Teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoon Applesauce
3 Tablespoons Canola Oil
2 Tablespoon Honey
2 Cup water (need to try straight Enriched Rice Milk or DariFree)
1/4 Cup Rice Milk (just needed a bit more liquid and I grabbed this instead of water figure it was more nutricious.

Put griddle / non-stick pan on burner and turn on Med to Med Hi. Mix dry ingredients with Wisk. Mix liquids: water, oil, applesauce, honey, Rice Milk. Pour liquid into the dry and mix thoroughly with wisk until everything is mixed well. The soda and baking powder will start working before done mixing. Pour by 1/3 to 1/4 cup on the griddle. Flip when edges are dry or start to lift off pan. Top with pure Maple Syrup or Nuttelex and powdered/icing/castor sugar and enjoy.

Variation / Substitutes / Possible Changes that have been tested.

• Sprinkle EnjoyLife Allergen Free Chocolate Chips into pancakes as soon as they have been poured onto the griddle.

So on Sunday evening Jaden ate his first ever Pizza.  We had bought an Orgran Pizza Crust mix several months ago. The kids were itching to make something last night for dinner instead of having leftovers so I mentioned to them that they could make a Jaden Safe Pizza.  Shay and Karlissa jumped on it.

We greased the pan with Nuttelex and sprinkled some Polenta (corn meal) on it.  Then we followed the directions to make the Pizza Crust. The kids did all of the kneading and such.  We rolled it out with a round drinking glass since we don’t have a rolling pin in Australia. Then all four helped pinch the sides, put sauce and meat on it. We used some left over roast chicken, some ham and some Green Capsicum (Green Pepper).  Wish we had had some more veggies in the house we could have put on. Of course there was no cheese put on the pizza as there is no dairy free cheese substitute that is free from Soy (at least not that we have found).

Anyway after 15 minutes in the oven Karlissa pulled out the pizza (and dropped it but we had a great save).   We carried it to the table and fed one very excited boy and an excited family.

Today we made some Allergy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies. They were great.  I got the recipe from: http://www.mothersclick.com/recipes/kid-favorites/madelines-dairy-free-nut-free-egg-free-chocolate-chip-cookies 
I had to substitute Nuttelex for the margarine, Darifree for the milk and used Gluten-Free and Soy Free flour and of course our favorite Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips as they are truly the only Jaden Safe Chocolate chips on the planet that we know. Too bad the 10oz bag costs $15 at our favorite local Allergy Food store.  I think I will try changing the sugar to all brown sugar.  When I do I think I will have varied the recipe enough to post it myself, right now just make those changes to the link and you will be good.

Summary: Normal Chocolate chip cookies would have had a food cost of $5 or less in America and these would have cost perhaps $8-$9. Here they cost us over $20 for the ingredients.  (Don’t know how often we will be able to afford these, but at least we had some good ones.)  I might try making them with some Australian made dark chocolate that is safe for Jaden to see if they still taste OK.

My wife has made some fabulous smoothies with berries and coconut milk, with some having the consistency of a good American Milkshake / Aussie Thick Shake.  But today we made our first batch of a more traditional tasting Chocolate Ice Cream.  We have some adjustments to do to get it just right but so far it is modified from other recipes we found on the net.  Here it is:

3 Cups Vance’s Food Darifree
1/2 Cup powered Sugar (I wanted it to dissolve faster)
1/4 Cup  granulated Sugar
1 1/2  tsp  GF Vanilla
3/4 Cup Cocoa
1 tsp Sunflower oil (Darifree is like Skim Milk so this was added for fat)

First I made the Darifree according to label directions with cold water in the Blender with lots of leftover for another try in a couple of days or for other cooking.  I think next time I will  use warm water to make the Darifree and then cool it in the fridge overnight.  Then I put all of the ingredients above into a blender.  After it was well blended I added it to a 1.25L/5 Cup Ice Cream maker.  It took about 30 minutes to freeze and then we scooped it out and put it in the freezer to finish hardening.

Analysis: It needs MORE fat and less cocoa.  We will probably use some Coconut milk next time for more fat. Typically we use some Coconut Milk with Rice Milk such as when making Mashed Potatoes to get the right fat content. But I don’t want to use Rice Milk for this as I just think the Darifree is more like the taste of Cow Milk and I will get a bit more picky with my ice cream. I LOVE Homemade ice cream and have grown up on the stuff.  We used to make Homemade Ice Cream in Florida at least once a week a few years ago and have really missed it in the past 3 years.

We probably would have made some ice cream earlier, but we really don’t have much room in the freezer to store the ice cream maker container and just happened to have some room lately.  We really need to get a larger fridge/freezer here.

What does Jaden say: Well he liked it until it melted. It just was melting too fast for him. But all of the family thought it was good though a little too much cocoa in it.

At AllergyBlock on Saturday, we bought some Jaden-safe Ice Cream cones made by Orgran.  Jaden had been asking for ice cream cones for some time and I just became aware of these a few weeks ago. The Gluten Free ones at the local grocery store still had some Soy in them. He has been asking for Jaden Safe Ice Cream every day since we got them. This Evening, 15 minutes before the oven incident below, I bought some Passion Fruit Sorbet made by Gelativo. After dinner I scooped some in his cone. He was so excited and happy. He ate it all up faster than I have ever seen him eat the Sorbet before.

I ate a cone too. They tasted as good as any other cake cone.  Wonderful.

Our Allergen-Free Chocolate Cake recipe works well in Oz.  I modified the original entry to update for cooking in Australia. Now it shows the flours I have used here.  It seems the All-Purpose Gluten-Free flours here work much better for baking instead of Pancakes. Also we used Apple-Cider Vinegar too without it affecting the taste adversely.

Well we have one restaurant in Australia that we can all eat at:  McDonald’s Jaden can eat two things on the menu. A beef patty which has been placed in the box plain without bread and Fries also known as Hot Chips. The burger is 100% Australian beef with no Added Soy.  Jaden has not had a negative reaction to the fries though he has to the USA McDonald’s fries with their coating of Hydrogenated Soy.  Also Jaden could eat the fries at Burger King in the USA, but he can’t have the fries at their subsidiary here known as Hungry Jack’s as the sugar that coats them in Australia is derived from Wheat.

Needless to say if Crystal and the kids are out and about and need to get some food or when we are traveling we have an option to eat.  Not one that we would willing choose everytime, but it is possible.

Also the McDonald’s seem to always have a KFC near them, so for one occasion, we got Jaden’s at McD’s and everyone elses’ food at KFC.

While watching Giada on the Food Channel at my mom’s house, she mentioned sheep’s milk cheese.  I had just been pondering how Jaden will never have a Pizza because there wasn’t a cheese he could eat.  Well, perhaps this was the answer.  After a quick Google search, I found http://www.sheepdairying.com/Milk.htm which mentioned that many people allergic to cow and goat milk could safely consume sheep’s milk.  Well I found some Pecorino Romano cheese made with 100% Pure Sheeps Milk at a store in Louisville on Saturday (see post below) and we gave Jaden some about over an hour ago.

 I rubbed some on his arm at first.  His arm has shown no reaction.  If it had been Cow’s milk he would have had hives in that spot already.  Crystal came home with a watermelon and Jaden started grabbing it and some other foods and started eating.  Now his nose is running and he is coughing a little bit.  Uggh.  Was it the cheese or something else.  We will have to try again later.  I’ll report the conclusion and the progress as we test.

One hopeful thought was that Australia has a LOT of sheep so perhaps sheep’s milk cheese would be quite readily available in multiple types of cheeses.

Nearly all of the Coeliac / Celiac Sprue sites talk about Oats in the United States as being contaminated with Wheat. To date this has not been observed by us. Our son has had some quick reactions to wheat, barley and rye but never to a product that had Oats in it without declared wheat. In fact Jaden can eat Cap’n Crunch and Honeycomb cereal with no noted problems. I think the reason some Coeliacs have problems with Oats are based on the Avenin protein in Oats as opposed to any cross-contamination of wheat in the factory or field. Perhaps we have just been fortunate to not encounter contamination yet, but perhaps the contaminiation is not has likely as warned.  (Disclaimer: I would guess it is also possible a very minute amount of wheat gluten may not affect Jaden as much as a Coeliac.)

If you just recently found a problem with Gluten, you may consider experimenting with Oat containing products as long as you can recover from the reaction. Also there are some countries where wheat is not grown but oats are and in that case they are really sure of no contaminiation. Try a product of those countries to see if you react to the Avenin then you could try the USA Oats products. Reference.

I found an article a while back about US Government Scientists formulating a recipe for Gluten-Free pancakes that were indistinguishable from Pancakes with Gluten (Wheat) in them. The article is here. The biggest problem was that they talked about it, but NEVER published the recipe online.  Then several weeks later the journal that they published in put the issue online.  Now I can see the recipe as part of their scientific analysis of the pancakes. However it does call for putting the Sweet Potatoes in Liquid Nitrogen as a step in making the flour.

And it looks like they studied the pancakes for every type of quality with lots of scientific tests.  The only thing that is not mentioned in the article was whether the pancakes TASTED ANY GOOD or not!

Well we will find it out when we make our own.  We’ll let you know.