Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Dairy-free, soy-free treats

I have a sweet tooth. I love desserts, especially chocolate ones. Since I've had to forgo foods containing dairy and soy for Teresa's sake, I've discovered just how prevalent those ingredients are, especially in boxed mixes. So many desserts - even those made from scratch - contain dairy...I challenge anyone to find a restaurant that serves a dairy-free dessert. Thankfully, I've found a few sweet treats that I can enjoy these days:

1. Enjoy Life chocolate bars

My friend Jennifer found these at Whole Foods: dairy-free, soy-free, and nut-free chocolate bars. She got me two different flavors: dark and rice milk. Both are excellent!! I've tried 2 other dairy-free, soy-free dark chocolate bars (by Dagoba and Green & Black's - both organic) and both were very bitter. But Enjoy Life's is not. Yum yum!


2. Purely Decadent "ice cream" made with coconut milk

During my mom's recent visit she treated me to a pint from Harris Teeter. I got the chocolate flavor and it was absolutely delicious. I like coconut milk in recipes, so the flavor in my "ice cream" doesn't bother me at all.

3. Made from scratch chocolate cake

I have a recipe clipped from an old magazine that doesn't call for dairy or eggs. It's so easy to put together and the results are moist and delicious. David spreads frosting on his pieces, but I don't think it's necessary. Here's the recipe:

Cinnamon-Chocolate Cake (12 servings)

2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cup sugar
6 T cocoa powder
2 t cinnamon
2 t baking soda
3/4 cup oil
2 T white vinegar
2 t vanilla
2 cups water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. Stir in oil, vinegar, vanilla, and water until well-blended. Frances tip: Grease a 13 x 9" baking pan with the excess oil from your measuring cup. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 25-30 minutes until cake pulls away from side of pan. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

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In putting together this post, I discovered that Enjoy Life also makes chocolate chips, so I may have to purchase a bag to try in our pancakes (made with rice milk). I've missed chocolate chip pancakes!! Now the only thing I need is to find a decent dairy-free brownie recipe. I've tried a couple and they weren't any good at all.

2 comments:

Katherine T. Lauer said...

Aren't the vegan chocolate cake recipes interesting? Apparently during WWII when dairy and eggs were so precious, these recipes were prevalent!

0delia said...

I've been looking for recipes for my host sister who has 5 of the big 8 allergies and I came upon this brownie recipe.

http://www.earthbalancenatural.com/#/great-taste/recipe-19/

Hopefully it will be of some use. ^_^