Catering for birthday party with multiple allergies

[orangedrizzle]

It's my 4 year old's birthday party soon and I need to cater for multiple allergies. One child has a peanut allergy and another has milk/soya. Can anyone suggest what would be good for food? It's late afternoon. I normally do sandwiches but wanted to do something a little more substantial.

Salted crisps
Salted Nachos
Plain/salty popcorn
Swizzels sweets
Haribo
Cut apples into slices and put into a bowl of slightly lemony water.
Asda has a "free from" caterpillar cake that's definitely nut- and dairy free, check if it's also soya free.

A lot of bread has soya even when it's dairy free so watch out for that.

Are you serving food as a buffet? It might be easier to make snack bag/boxes for each child so you can give the others "normal" food and the allergic kids their own version. Or do they need the room to be completely allergen free?

I can understand your difficulty.

Basil Fawlty, fed up with the clientele for his 'Gourmet Evening' said that next time he would just serve a 'trough of baked beans, garnished with a dead dog'.

(ATTRACTIVE AS IT SOUNDS, PLEASE DON'T DO THIS.)

Chicken drumsticks and chips?

This is very normal food in my family! First you need to find out if the kids eat may contains as this will make a big difference. Also ask the parents for advice, they may prefer to bring there own food. Suggestions for bread is Tesco finest. Vitalite or some of the flora margarines are dairy and soya free. Most cocktail sausages are fine, jam, ham or marmite sandwiches, jammy dodgers and bourbon biscuits are usually ok. If you make cakes it is very easy to make a dairy and soya and nut free cake as all you need to change is to use dairy free marjarine and it will taste the same, or use Betty Croker cake mixes as they are fine. Hope this helps. You also need to read all labels and I expect the parents will want to check the labels too.

Thanks for all of the ideas. They're very helpful. What about hot dogs then snacks on the side like crisps, fruit, biscuits etc? Would this work?

Yes, just ask the Mum of the dairy/soya free child where they buy rolls from, and get them from there, and check the ingredients on the sausages (most will be fine)

Check with their parents. My dc has allergies and I always bring their own food to parties even though it’s awkward - I feel so guilty when people cater for them as it’s so kind of them but it invariably isn’t actually suitable despite best intentions! The worst is when they directly offer to dc some treat like food and then I have to say they can’t have it. Thank you for being so considerate!

Keep packaging so the allergy parents can check. If stuff is plated up, put the wrappers under the plate so you can keep track of what's what.

Jus rol pastry is soya and nut free. Only the "all butter" ones have milk in.
You could get the puff pastry sheet, unroll it, spread it with something like jam, brown sugar or tomato paste and roll it up into a long cylinder shape.
Cut into 1cm slices and bake, the spirals will puff out as they brown.
Naice ham is generally fine unless breaded, but reformed ham often has lactose (a milk sugar).