Gluten-free

Lemon cheesecake with a gluten-free biscuit base.

by frogpondsrock on December 27, 2009

in Amy,food,Gluten is EVIL!

In our family one of the must have foods at any celebration is a cheesecake. The recipe is Mum’s and over the years I have made this lemon cheesecake my signature dessert.

I normally use a packet of biscuits as the base but now that Amy has Coeliacs I needed to make a gluten free base. So I simply adapted a basic biscuit recipe and made a baked crust instead.I was thrilled with the results.

I didn’t really follow a recipe for this biscuit mix I just flew by the seat of my pants and unlike the hommous disaster this worked out really well.

Cream 4 tablespoons of butter with a 1/2 a cup of sugar, add a few drops of vanilla essence and then beat in an egg. Then slowly add a 1 and a 1/2 cups of flour to the mix.(I mixed together equal parts gluten free plain flour with almond meal) keep on slowly beating in the flour until it is well mixed. This makes a soft dough.

I spread the mix, which was quite sticky onto the base and up the sides a bit  of my spring form cake pan. I then baked it in a hot oven until it went not quite golden brown. I had a bit left over so I put dessertspoon sized blobs onto a baking tray squished a hole in the centre with my thumb, plonked some jam into the hole and baked them for about 12 minutes or until they were golden brown. These were really yummy little jam drops and I am pleased that I have found an easy, gluten free biscuit recipe to cook with Amy when she comes to visit.

Now back to the cheesecake. Here are the ingredients.

1 block of philadelphia cream cheese (250 g), 1 cup of sugar. 1 can of carnation milk, 1 packet of lemon jelly, 1 tsp of gelatine powder. 1 fresh lemon.

Put the carnation milk in the fridge the night before as it needs to be really cold.

Before you start put a large mixing bowl in the freezer to chill down.

Add one teaspoon of gelatine powder to a packet of lemon jelly crystals, stir well. Then add one cup of boiling water to the jelly, mix well and put it aside to cool down.

Soften the cream cheese in the microwave for 30 seconds. Add one cup of sugar to the cream cheese and beat to a smooth consistency. I also add the zest from one lemon to make it a bit zingy.

Now quickly put the cold carnation milk into the chilled bowl and beat until peaks will almost stand up by themselves.

Add the philly cheese mix and beat on slow

Add the jelly mix and beat on slow for a minute. Then finish mixing by hand.

Pour it into the cake pan and pop into the fridge to set overnight.

If you like a really lemony cheesecake you can add the juice of a lemon to the cup of boiling water before you make the jelly.

There you go. Enjoy. Any questions just ask me in the comments and I will answer them.

*Make sure the baked biscuit base is cool to the touch before you put the cheesecake mix into the pan.

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A gluten free zone.

by frogpondsrock on August 31, 2009

in Amy,Ehlers Danlos Syndrome,food

Gluten is evil. Well in regards to my granddaughter Amy, gluten is certainly the enemy.

I will start at the beginning for those of you out there amongst the interwebs not able to read my mind.

Veronica was reading a blog post where the writer was describing her daughter’s behavioural changes when she ate anything with wheat in it.Tantrums, mood swings, manic behaviour and meltdowns.Yet again the blogosphere provided a light-bulb moment for Veronica as the writer could have been describing Amy.

Veronica rang me and told me that she was thinking of eliminating all wheat from Amy’s diet. During the course of our phone conversation, I pulled out half the contents of my pantry and we examined the ingredients. Massel stock cubes are gluten free yay, but homebrand french onion soup is chockers full of the stuff. Spring Gully worcestershire sauce is good, Holbrooks is bad and so it went on.

I found gluten in some very unexpected places. There is wheat in marshmallows. The sneaky fuckers! I was going to make rocky road for Amy’s birthday. Gah!

Fast forward a few gluten free days.

Yesterday Amy stayed with me for a few hours and the change in my granddaughter is very obvious. Amy was much, much calmer. We still did all the things that we normally do but we did them much, much, much slower.

Normally Amy has me tearing about the place at breakneck speed. Feed the fish.Look in the cupboards. Check the chooks.Collect the eggs. Cook the eggs. Throw the ball for Harry.Play in the dirt. Look for tadpoles. Eat the beans in the garden. See Poppy. Run in circles. Come on Nanny chase Amy! etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum.

Generally after spending a few hours with Amy I am exhausted, happy that we had fun together but totally exhausted. Yesterday after I waved goodbye to my granddaughter I compared notes with The Spouse and we both agreed that WOW, there was a marked difference in Amy’s behaviour. And double Wow I also,wasn’t completely knackered and in desperate need of a nanna nap. *cue applause.*

The most exciting behavioural improvement from my perspective, was that Amy allowed me to correct her speech. Previously when I  would correct her speech,Amy would sometimes listen and sometimes not. Yesterday she not only listened to me but she practiced her pronunciation with me, until she had the tricky word down pat. I am thrilled to bits.

Gluten is now the enemy.It also seems that there is a link between Ehlers Danlos and food allergies or intolerences. *sigh*

Also whilst we are on food related issues, my friend Barbara has just discovered her 22 month old son is allergic to peanuts.

Our issues with gluten aren’t life threatening and the changes needed are fairly easy to implement. Gluten wont send my Grand Daughter into anaphalactic shock it just sends her into meltdown mode, but it does mean a re-think on the foods we eat and it looks like  I am going to have to add a whole lot of new sites to my reader.

So my lovelies that was my weekend, How was yours?

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