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Original poster

Gluten and lactose free baking

27 replies

megonthemoon · 04/12/2009 08:40

My best friend's DS has just been diagnosed with a severe lactose intolerance and Coeliac disease. It is his 2nd birthday in a couple of weeks, and I want to help her make a cake and some biscuits for him.

I'm a good baker, but am a bit uncertain about whether I can just replace the flour and butter with the relevant substitutes or whether it gets tricky and I actually am better seeking out something made with veg oil etc.

Can I use soya margarine as a butter substitute for baking? What flour should I use - is rice flour good or should it be something else?

Any tips? Any recipes? We want to make his birthday party as 'normal' as possible for him and the other guests!

OP posts:

bramblebooks · 04/12/2009 09:32

piginthekitchen.blogspot.com/

ABetaDad · 04/12/2009 09:43

Chocolate Brownies are good AND simple. Just go to M&S and buy their Gluten free flour which is a blend of rice, corn, potato, tapioca flour. Alternatively Doves Farm do a good blended gluten free flour available in Sainsbury.

Replace butter with margarine of course.

FaintlyMacabre · 04/12/2009 09:53

The Dove's farm flour is very good and is available everywhere. I find that gluten free biscuits work well, I think the gluten is less necessary than it would be in cakes or bread. The Dove's farm flour makes excellent cakes but they are best eaten on the day of making as they go crumbly quite quickly.
I don't have any experience of lactose free baking but I do find that the flavour of the butter comes through more strongly when using GF flour so depending on how strongly the margarine tastes you may be better off making a flavoured cake like chocolate or banana rather than plain sponge.

The lactose intolerance may well improve as his gut heals on the gluten free diet- it is quite common for newly diagnosed coeliacs to be temporarily lactose intolerant.

ABetaDad · 04/12/2009 11:51

FaintlyMacabre - this is very true.

"...it is quite common for newly diagnosed coeliacs to be temporarily lactose intolerant."

I have a quite severe rection if I go back to dairy (even a tiny bit) after 5 months of being on GF/LF diet. I hope it will get a bit better over time.

Original poster

megonthemoon · 04/12/2009 14:00

thank you - this is really helpful! i'm going to give a plain cake mix a whirl this afternoon with some doves farm flour and some marg. will try some plain and some flavoured with choc or fruit and see what we prefer (faintly macabre - thanks for the tip on flavouring the cake to hide the marg taste - that's really good to know)

OP posts:

CardyMow · 04/12/2009 22:25

Dove's farm flour makes lovely gingerbread men (or ladies, or dinosaurs...).

nannyl · 05/12/2009 00:08

you can probably use goats butter which works as well as cows butter

Original poster

megonthemoon · 05/12/2009 09:18

I used doves farm rice flour and sunflower marg in my test run. Taste okay as the marg taste wasn't too strong (used good marg rather than stork type hideous stuff) but are better as choc rather than plain, and noticeably drier than normal. Thinking I might try adding some ground almonds in place of some flour to see if that makes it a bit moister. Goats butter is a great idea - may be much better than marg partic for buttercream!

OP posts:

ABetaDad · 05/12/2009 11:36

megonthemoon - most coeliac (celiac) cakes/breads are quiet dry. Perhaps try using the Gluten & Wheat Free Plain White flour blend from Doves which has tapioca, maize, rice, potato, buckwheat in it. It might be a bit less dry.

Also on the goat milk butter. Not sure about that as goats milk does contain lactose still which is the problem. It is not an intolerance to 'dairy' but to the lactose.

Adding ground almonds is a good idea providing the child is not sensitve to nuts obviously. I store my home made coeliac bread/cakes in a sealed bag in the fridge which seems to keep them reasonably moist for a few days.

moonmother · 05/12/2009 11:56

My Dp is both Gluten and lactose intolerant.

Tesco's do a great chocolate cake mix , the only thing you need to add is eggs and oil, and it makes a great cake. I then make choc butter icing using pure spread.

The veg oil makes the cake lovely and moist, so even if you didn't want to buy the cake mix, and try your own , I would advise adding some oil into the recipe somewhere, perhaps in place of some of the marg.

On the goat milk note, Dp also is affected by this. Soya milk is a great - I've used it as a subsitute in many things and always works great.

Pure margarine in my opinion is the best lactose free marg on the market too, some sunflower margs, have traces of milk in, so maybe something to check.

DontEatMountains · 05/12/2009 12:15

DONOT just replace the butter with margarine. Most margarines contain milk even the ones sold as oil spread. so you have to be super careful

We use vitalite with is sunflower oil with no soya or milk products!

nannyl · 05/12/2009 12:39

well i never knew that about goats butter...

my friend (says she) is lactose intolerant, and i / she uses goats butter / products and does not have the same unpleasant reactions that she gets if she consumes cows products

bramblebooks · 06/12/2009 09:13

I have just succeeded in making vegetarian cornish pasties for my DH, I am so delighted! I used Mrs Crimble's pastry and knocked up the filling using a bag of pre-cut soup mix veg, mixed with tomato puree and some curry powder! The pastry was fab, quite stretchy as there's xantham gum in the mix.

I also use Demarle cookware, so I've got a rubber/silicone rolling mat and ovenware which I peel away from the pastry, rather than trying to peel the pastry from it.

pecanpie · 06/12/2009 10:13

To the OP - Don't forget Xanthan gum! It really improves the texture of all gluten free baking and I've found that it removes a lot of the dryness too. Doves Farm make one and you can get it in most Tesco stores (except for my local one of course!!).

I use a regular sponge cake recipe to make my gluten free cakes (6 each GF flour, sugar, marg,3 eggs)plus GF baking powder (you have to check the ingredients) and a teaspoon of xanthan gum and they turn out really well. Without the xanthan, the cake will dry out really quickly. You should also flavour the cake as the flour tastes a bit different - we do chocolate or cinnamon spiced cake (sometimes grate a bit of carrot into those to make it a bit more moist).
Good luck!

Original poster

megonthemoon · 06/12/2009 20:56

I used Pure spread - made sure to check the marg ingredients as I know some do have dairy in them, but Pure is dairy free and didn't affect the taste too much which was great as I was worried it would taste of the marg too much.

I checked on the goats butter - he's def not allowed that as it is all lactose he needs to avoid rather than cow specific.

Thanks for the tips on the flours/xanthan gum/oil. It's daft really that I've never had to make a gluten free cake before - my dad was diagnosed with coeliac disease 25 years ago so I've lived with cooking for a coeliac for a long time, but he doesn't have a sweet tooth at all so I've actually never had to bake him a cake!!! So many helpful tips here I'm going to do a bit of trial and error over the next week or so with all your ideas. Yum yum!

OP posts:

bubblebabeuk · 09/12/2009 05:53

I was just about too recommend Xanthum Gum, but you beat me to it! LOL Also your friend should be able to get GF stuff on prescription for free for her DS. I get the glutafin cake mixes as part of my regular prescription and they make up lovely. We only use GF stuff in our house rather than have to make two sorts of meal all the time.

ABetaDad · 09/12/2009 07:16

It is true, Xanthan gum is the elixir of life in Gluten Free cooking. Took me an age to find a shop which had it though.

Where do you all buy it from? Is it availble from any supermarket except Waitrose?

bramblebooks · 09/12/2009 09:12

I got mine from my local tesco.

bubblebabeuk · 09/12/2009 10:09

Mine came from tesco too! look in the baking isle, although its sometimes on the free from isle!

ABetaDad · 09/12/2009 16:59

Thanks for that. I will take a look.

silverfrog · 09/12/2009 17:06

www.dietaryneedsdirect.co.uk, and goodnessdirect (can't remember if it's a .com or a .co.uk) sell all manner of things gluten and dairy (and most other things_ free

that's where I tend to buy most of my stuff from

CantSleepWontSleep · 09/12/2009 17:43

All you need is a copy of this book. She uses vegetables instead of fat, and rice flour. I have recommended it to loads of people and they are all delighted with it.

piginthekitchen · 10/12/2009 11:10

Hi Megonthemoon,

Some lovely soul (thank-you bramblebooks) has already mentioned my blog, it has lots of cake recipes that could be of interest to your friend. HOpe that helps, cheers,
Pigx
www.piginthekitchen.blogspot.com/

bramblebooks · 10/12/2009 18:37

pig in the kitchen I totally heart you and made your gluten free pasties for my dh at the weekend - he suffers when we go to cornwall! GF and Veggie no less! xxx

bramblebooks · 10/12/2009 18:37

btw pig, is Hartley in the garden?

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