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I have been rootling through my recipe box with a view to choosing the next few recipes to work up for the site and it occurred to me that it was time to ask where you feel the biggest gap is in the dairy-free recipes available. It has always seemed to me that there are lots of naturally dairy-free recipes out there, but not so many which make good (ie non-hair-shirt) versions of cream and milk-based dishes and many of these are sweet. Certainly when you try to eat out it’s the dessert department which is singularly lacking, (yet another bowl of fruit salad, how nice!) and I know that friends who can come up with main courses, struggle to produce desserts. To this end, I have always tended to focus on baking and pudding making when devising recipes…, but is this what you really want?
At the moment I have various cakes, puddings and pastry-based things lined up. If you have suggestions of other types of recipe you would like to see, please leave a comment and let me know!
We all love pancakes in this family, so of course, we have a recipe which you can use for sweet or savoury treats. Having experienced Breton galettes (the huge, buckwheat savoury pancakes made in Brittany) I like to make a full meal out of pancakes. We start with two – or maybe three!- savoury pancakes first, then move on to two sweet ones. That way you can go for several flavours, rather than having to choose between favourites.
If you want to go for the whole experience, you can make two half batches of batter; one with buckwheat flour and one with ordinary plain flour. That way, you can do proper Breton-style savoury galettes for your first course and wheat flour ones for dessert.
To make gorgeous pancakes you will need: a large mixing bowl, a sieve, a whisk, a flat-bottomed frying pan, a fish slice / large, flat spatula for flipping.
Recipe: Pancake Batter
Ingredients
- 4oz / 110g plain flour
- 2 large eggs
- 7floz / 200ml unsweetened soya milk (I use Tesco’s own NOT the economy version)
- 3floz / 75ml water
- 2 heaped dsps Pure Sunflower Spread.
- a little sunflower oil for cooking
- Don’t add any salt to your batter as dairy free spreads tend to be quite salty already.
Instructions
- Sift your flour into a large mixing bowl.
- Mix the milk and water in a measuring jug.
- Make a well in the middle and crack the eggs into it.
- Whisk the eggs in the middle and gradually whisk in flour from the edge of the ring around the egg.
- Don’t panic when lumps start to form, it’ll be all right in the end.
- Keep whisking, and as it starts to thicken, add the milk and water a bit at a time.
- Keep it all going until you have all the flour whisked in smoothly.
- At this stage, you can leave the batter for an hour intil you are ready to cook.
- Immediately before you cook, melt the spread and whisk that in too.
- Set yourself up to cook with a hot pan and your bowl beside the cooker. Have plates ready to serve and use a small cup to scoop up a small amount of batter to pour into the pan.
- Tip a little batter into the pan – always less than you think – and swirl it round the pan into a thin even layer.
- The first pancake will be a bit too thick, probably rather lumpy and it will probably stick (at least, mine always does). Don’t give this first one to a guest, just eat it, quietly in the kitchen! That was your trial run. Now you know how much batter to use next time and the pan’s heat will have evened out.
- If you’re feeling brave you can flip your pancakes, but if I’m cooking lots for the whole family I opt for the boring but safe fish slice!
- Serve straight away with the filling of your choice!
Quick Notes
There are so many good fillings you can use:
Ham, cheese and egg
Ham, fried onions and mushrooms
Sliced cooked sausage and onion
Jam
Lemon and sugar
Chocolate spread and vanilla ice cream
Grated chocolate and brandy (possibly with ice cream too!)
Cooking time (duration): 10 minutes
Preparation time (duration): 10 minutes
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 2 adults
Meal type: dinner
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This issue came to my attention recently when a lactose-intolerant relative was inadvertantly poisoned by eating a green curry at a Thai restaurant made with milk-laced coconut milk. Some research into the various powdered coconut milks available, revealed that every one that I’ve found has skimmed milk powder in it. This is critical when eating out, as Thai food is usually regarded as being absolutely safe.
Many Thais are lactose-intolerant, as are vast numbers of people throughout South-East Asia, and Thai food has largely evolved without dairy produce; however, powdered coconut milk is a cheap way of buying and storing a base ingredient for restaurant cooking. Unfortunately, therefore, you can no longer afford to assume that Thai curries will be safe.
ALWAYS ask about the ingredients if you are eating out. If restaurant staff cannot or will not tell you whether or not the kitchen is using powdered coconut milk, the best advice would be to choose a stir-fry…or to eat elsewhere!
Yet another one to cross off the list! I’ve just been contacted with this news. I don’t know how long it’s been since the recipe changed; I don’t get up to a large Tesco very often, so the last time I bought a packet was quite a while ago.
If you have a packet in the cupboard, CHECK ITS INGREDIENTS! If you have friends who also need to know about the change, please let them know.
I shall update our review page. It’s depressing that the vast majority of the changes I have to make to that page are removals from the safe list rather than additions.
I’ve just come from Morrison’s (don’t know whether you have one of them near you), and they have quite a range which are labelled “may contain traces of…” as usual. It depends how careful you need to be with the dairyfreeness of your biscuits. By and large, the labelling is just lawyer-speak for “We cannot prove that no trace of milk has made its way into the mixture and therefore, since we have no intention of being sued, we are covering our backs.” However, if you have someone who is severely, anaphylactically allergic to milk protein, it would not be worth the risk. If you’re avoiding the milk because of lactose intolerance, there isn’t the same degree of risk associated with consuming tiny traces (assuming there might be contamination from the factory) since this isn’t an allergy and, while the gut symptoms are unpleasant, they’re not going to cause anaphylaxis. I’m lactose-intolerant, as is one of my children, and we can eat most of the “may contain” biscuits without any repercussions. However, my husband is allergic to milk protein and I always keep his biscuits rigidly milk-free as we have had incidences of contamination occuring in biscuits labelled “may contain”. I also store them separately from ours. We are a two biscuit tin household!
As for cheap biscuits that are dairy-free, you’re almost always safe with gingernuts and rich tea biscuits. If you want a fairly cheap treat, Bourbon creams (bizarrely I’ve always felt, given they’re a ‘cream’ biscuit) are always milk free. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the company making them won’t opt for the lawyer-speak labelling. I’ve found coconut rings at Morrison’s today, so it might be worth looking for other brands of those.
Do check our reviews pages for reviews of lots of different dairy-free biscuits which may give you other ideas. If you find something that’s good out there, please let us know so that we can spread the good news! Likewise we’re always keen to hear about foods which have become toxic.
Good hunting!
I tried the all-day approach to the no knead bread the other day and it worked superbly! I put it together about 8am and left it all day. Just before going to bed I knocked it back and popped it into its tin, then it sat and rose all night. In the morning, I put the oven on when I got up and we had fresh, beautiful bread for breakfast. Fantastic! The only thing you have to bear in mind is that the bread really does need to cool down before you can slice it. If you try to tackle it while it’s hot, you just mash it! If you aren’t rushing out in the morning, this would make a great start to the day. After all, it’s already in its tin when you get up: all you have to do is heat the oven and pop it in for half an hour.
The really brilliant thing about this way of making bread is that, while it takes a long time to do its stuff, you don’t have to be there holding its hand, nor do you have to put any real effort into making it. 1o minutes at the start and about 5 minutes in the middle is all it takes. You don’t use the power of a bread maker all night; you don’t even have to put it somewhere warm! How easy is that?!
Even more important, the taste and texture of the finished loaf is fabulous. This is bread like it just isn’t in the shops. When I was small, we lived in Switzerland for a while and there was a baker in a nearby village who still made traditional bread in a wood-fired oven (also the most heavenly mille-feuille you could ever imagine, but I digress!). The bread had an amazing open, light texture combined with a full flavour. Now I know what he was doing: he was letting it rise slowly and for ages. This is the way to make fantastic bread, without having to invest hours of effort into it.
I now have two bread tins and on a week when I cannot get into town to buy bread or when we have visitors and the bread consumption goes up, I have the tins going in rotation. One is started off overnight, then knocked back in the morning and baked for lunch, while the next goes in for an all day rise, is knocked back at bed-time and baked off for breakfast next day. And so on and so on…
The next thing to try, is making it into little rolls. Now they could well be eatable hot as you could tear them open and let the spread melt. Mmm!
A slice of this loaf cake makes a great addition to a lunch box and it really isn’t difficult.
For this recipe you will need: a 2lb loaf tin, a food processor and a large mixing bowl.
Recipe: Banana Cake
Ingredients
- 8oz / 225g self-raising flour
- 4oz / 100g spread
- 6oz / 175g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1lb / 450g peeled weight of ripe bananas, roughly chopped
- 6oz / 175g mixed dried fruit (go with your own preferences: I use 1 ½oz / 45g chopped dates, 1 ½oz / 45g chopped apricots, 2 oz / 55g sultanas and 1oz / 30g raisins
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 4 / 180C / 350F.
- Put everything except the dried fruit in the food processor and whizz it until it is smooth and creamy.
- Tip the mixture out into a bowl and sitr in the dried fruit.
- Pour it all into the tin and spread it out evenly.
- Bake for about 75 minutes.
- Check to see that the top isn’t getting too brown. If it looks as though the top is brown enough, cover the cake with foil.
- Bake for another 15 minutes.
- Test with a skewer to see whether it is ready or not. If the skewer comes out clean, it’s ready. There is quite a lot of fruit in this cake, so the skewer may well come out sticky, but it shouldn’t have soggy cake mix on it.
- Leave to cool, in the tin.
Quick Notes
Keeps for 2-3 days easily. In an airtight tin, it will make nearer a week. Ours rarely lasts that long!
Preparation time (duration): 15 minutes
Cooking time (duration): about 90 minutes
Diet type: Vegetarian
Number of servings (yield): 12+
Meal type: dessert
Culinary tradition: English
Microformatting by hRecipe.
These are so easy to make and they make a lovely after-dinner mint which is sadly lacking these days since pretty much everybody commercial has started to put milk/butterfat into plain chocolate. You do need to be lucky and have one of the few stores to have dairy-free digestive biscuits on their shelves nearby, but you can always make a batch of basic biscuits to crush up if you have to. I’ve recently discovered that Morrison’s value digestives are dairy-free and I’m told that the Co-op do vegan digestives, as well as Dove’s Farm if you can find them.
For this recipe you will need: a shallow baking tin (at least 9″ square, but a swiss roll tin will do fine as long as you don’t expect to fill it); foil; a food processor or a strong plastic bag and a rolling pin; a glass bowl and a heavy-bottomed saucepan.
 Ready to eat!
Recipe: Choc-mint Squares
Ingredients
- ½lb / 225g digestive biscuits
- 3oz / 85g dairy-free spread
- 4oz / 115g Kinnerton’s plain chocolate
- 1tbsp brandy (optional)
- peppermint essence
- at least 8oz /225g icing sugar
- a few drops of green food colouring (optional)
- another 3oz / 85g Kinnerton’s plain chocolate
Instructions
- Line a shallow square or rectangular baking tin with foil.
- Crush the biscuits to fairly fine crumbs either in a bag with a rolling pin or using a food processor.
- Melt the spread and chocolate in a saucepan over a low heat. Keep an eye on it and stir frequently to make sure that it doesn’t overheat as that will spoil the chocolate. On no account let it boil!
- Stir in the biscuits and the brandy if you wish to use it.
- When your mixture is even, tip it into the tin and flatten it out until it is about ½” / 1cm thick and leave it to cool and set.
- Mix the icing sugar with water. Only about a desertspoonful of water at first. You always need less water than you think you will to make water icing. This is a bit trial and error as it seems to vary from one time to the next. You’re aiming for a thick texture which is only just spreadable. If it is any softer it will simply run off the biscuit base.
- When you’re happy with the icing, mix in a couple of drops of peppermint essence and the food colouring (if you wish to have green icing). Always taste the icing to check that you have the peppermint flavour right. Don’t add too much straight away: you can always add more, but if you put in too much, it will taste like toothpaste: yuk!
- Pour the icing over the base and allow it to set.
- Melt the extra chocolate and pour it over the icing. Allow it to set. Do not be tempted to chill it in the fridge to hurry it up or your chocolate will go all cloudy.
- Cut up into squares and tuck in! Oh, it does keep in an airtight box for about a week if it gets the chance!
Variations
I now make mine without the green food colouring and it’s just as good, if not better!
Cooking time (duration): 20 minutes + 3 lots of setting time (about an hour each).
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): about 20-25 squares, depending on how you choose to chop it up.
Meal type: dessert
Culinary tradition: English
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Yes, really! You can make delicious bread with no kneading and minimal effort. It makes fantastic bread for weekends, as you do need to be around to bake in the middle of the day if you want to eat it very fresh. If you don’t mind eating it the following morning, you can do it any day. I was given this recipe by my father, who in turn had it from Abel and Cole (their veg. box suppliers). However, having listened to this week’s Food Programme on Radio 4, it sounds very much like what Elizabeth David was advocating over 30 years ago.
This gives you bread which uses very little yeast and no heat or power other than for baking. The texture is lovely and open like the French pain de campagne, the flavour is delicious and the recipe works just as well for white or granary flour.
Recipe: No-Knead Bread
Ingredients
- 270g / 9½oz strong white flour
- 270g / 9½oz malted grain flour
- 1/2 tsp dried active yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 360ml / 13floz fairly hot water
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- Start this bread in the late afternoon or evening.
- Heat the water to the point where you can just keep your finger in it, but it’s clearly hot.
- Put the flours in a large bowl.
- Add the salt, yeast and sugar.
- Mix all the dry ingredients very thoroughly. This is crucial.
 Pour in the water and mix thoroughly with a clean hand to form a sticky dough. The dough really does need to be very sticky. If it’s at all dry, add a little more warm water. If your dough is too dry, it won’t rise properly.- Cover the bowl with cling film and leave it on the worktop overnight. Do not put the bowl anywhere warm, just leave it out in the kitchen. It doesn’t need warmth to rise.
- In the morning (about 7am -7.30am if you want to eat it at lunchtime) tip the dough out of the bowl onto a floured board and flatten it out with your finger tips. You don’t have to particularly gentle, but there’s no need to go for full scale kneading, just flatten it out.
- Fold one side in to the middle, then fold the other side in on top of it.
- Shape the dough to fit your loaf tin and pop it in.
- Cover the tin with lightly oiled cling film and put it back to carry on rising for at least another 5 hours. If you’re out at work all day, you can leave this to rise all day and just pop it in the oven when you get home.
- Pre-heat the oven to 210C/Gas Mark 7
- Bake your bread for 30 minutes until the top is a lovely golden colour.
- Tip the bread out of the tin, tap the bottom of the loaf to check that it’s cooked. If it is, the loaf will sound hollow.
- If you think it could do with just a little more, pop the loaf back in the oven, without its tin for 5 minutes.
- When baked, allow the loaf to cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes so that you can cut it without mashing it.
Variations
If you want a white loaf, just use 540g of strong white flour.
Preparation time (duration): 15 minutes effort, many hours effortless rising
Cooking time (duration): 30 minutes
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 12+
Meal type: any time you like!
Culinary tradition: French style baking
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A very Happy Christmas to everyone! I hope your feasts were magnificent and you were able to feel proud that you can cater for all your dairy-free needs without compromising on taste or tradition!
Now that I’m not making jam and chutney all the hours there are, more things will be appearing here again very soon.
I am still here, really! It’s been a while since the last post principally because I’ve been making jam and chutney like it’s going out of fashion. I somehow ended up responsible for making for/with the kids in my children’s lower school enough jam and chutney to sink a reasonably large ship. Unsurprisingly, this has been VERY time consuming. (Especially on the school’s tiny electric cooker that doesn’t willingly give enough direct heat to boil sugar.) Anyway, I’m nearly done now and thought some of you might like the recipe I’ve evolved for pear chutney.
Chutney is really very easy. You do need a morning to devote to it, but it isn’t technically demanding. It just needs time to simmer. Made now, jars of this could make lovely Christmas presents with instructions to let it mature for at least a month.
Recipe: Christmas Pear Chutney
Ingredients
- 18floz / 500ml cider vinegar
- 3lb / 1kg300g firm cooking pears (not ripe Conference pears: they will mush), peeled cored and chopped weight
- 1lb / 450g cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped weight
- 1lb / 450g onions, peeled and chopped
- ½lb / 225g granulated sugar
- ½lb / 225g light muscovado sugar
- 2 floz / 55ml lemon juice
- zest of 1 orange/2 clementines
- juice of ½ orange/1 clementine
- 9oz / 250g mixed dried fruit (I was in a hurry and just bought a bag which had sultanas, raisins, currants and tiny bits of crystallised ginger. You could also make up your own mixture to the correct weight.)
- 3oz / 75g chopped dates
- ½tsp ground cinnamon
- ½tsp ground allspice
- ½tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- ½tsp ground ginger
- ½tsp chilli powder (optional)
Instructions
- Pour the vinegar into your cooking pan.
- Peel core and chop the fruit a pound or so at a time, transferring the fruit quickly to the pan and stirring thoroughly. You need to get it in the pan and coated in the vinegar as fast as possible to prevent it going brown. That’s why you don’t want to peel and prepare it all at once
- Put all the remaining ingredients in a large, heavy-bottomed pan. I use a large Le Creuset casserole. You really do need something with a solid, heavy bottom as this is going to simmer over a low heat for three or four hours. If the bottom of the pan is not good and thick, the chutney will burn.
- Stir at intervals over the next few hours until the mixture is thick and dark brown.
- The chutney is ready when you can drag your wooden spoon across the surface, making a dent across it and it doesn’t fill with liquid.
- Pour it into sterilised jars and seal with sterilised lids. You cannot use cellophane seals as the vinegar will eat through it, you will lose the seal and the chutney will dry out.
Cooking time (duration): about 4 hours
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): about 6-8 jars, depending on their size
Meal type: condiment
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