Allergy Free Cooking

So I haven't tried the croissants yet but I will get there.
However I did try and entire meal from the Allergy Free Cookbook from Alice Sherwood. This book is good because it gives you recipes for all different types of allergy cooking and the variations if you have more then one allergy. I personally made a full 3 course dinner including dessert that was both gluten free and lactose free. I started with Roast Beef, then there was Moussaka which is like an eggplant lasagna. I served these with crostini and for dessert we had peach and black berry cobbler. I must say it was a lot of good food but I warn if you want to do a meal like this first have a good amount of people, we had 7 and still had left overs and lastly make sure you give yourself time. I looked up the recipes but didn't think about looking at prep and cook time. the moussaka alone takes around 2 hours to complete from start to finish especially when you are also cooking and preparing other meals.
The Roast Beef was prepared just the way my mom does it but with out the vegetables. You take a Roast put it in a pot add some water, add your spices and then put in an oven that has been preheated to 375 and wait about an hour.
The Moussaka was amazing. If you have never cooked eggplant, like myself, I would suggest this as your first recipe it was easy. You didn't have to skin it or anything you just cut it into slices and then salt and leave for about a half hour so that the juices are soaked up and then follow the recipe. Very easy but like I said time consuming, the eggplant has to sit with salt on it for a half hour, your bechamel sauce has to infuse for 20 minutes and you have to cook the meat separately, I used beef instead of lamb. As well the recipe calls for the meat to simmer for around 40 minutes and then after everything has been prepared separately you then cook it all together for another 40 or so minutes. So again I warn you if you don't have a lot of time this might not be the best recipe for you but it is definitely delicious afterward... very rewarding.
And the french bread for crostini's, oh anyone who says you can't make bread that tastes like bread has never tried this recipe. I will say one thing it is heavier and there are no air bubbles but I think I would have to say I like it better then the regular french baguettes. This I would say is the easier recipe of all. It said to blend the ingredients in a food processor but we did not have this so it was mixed by hand. The only thing I would say about making it gluten free is that you will need a lot more water then it says to use. Again though it also was a fast recipe. After it is all mixed and rolled you let it rise for about 25 minutes and then cook for another 25minutes or till brown. Yeah, very delicious.
Lastly we were going to make plum cobbler but it appears that the grocery stores around here are not carrying any, so instead we decided to make it a peach and then added black berries. This also was a very easy prep dish. You cut up your fruits and mix the dry ingredients by hand, took me and my mother together about 10 minutes and that was only because the peaches were not pitting fast. and then it cooks till the top is brown and the fruit juices are bubbling over the top. The only thing about this dish that we had a problem with was when I made it dairy free I used gluten and lactose free margarine and it was slightly warm so the top didn't crumble the way I wanted it too. As well some of the people at dinner didn't like the spices they suggested be in it.

Now this morning I made a recipe for pancakes that you can get for free from the Bulk Barn and I just used the pancake mix that you can get there. This gluten free pancake was fairly good the only thing about it was they were a little drier then regular pancakes. Overall though they were very delicious.
Hope you enjoy baking.
-Photo Alley