Chocolate Marble Pound Cake

This is a great recipe I found at www.godairyfree.org . I love the So Delicious line of coconut milk products and we use them frequently in our house. I'm always afraid of web pages disappearing, so I'm copying the recipe here, but you can go to the page here to see the original page with recipe. The only changes I made where adding a touch of salt and adding options for the fat (coconut oil or ghee) and eliminating a step or two in the directions (I'm all about simplifying and creating less dirty dishes when possible!).

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
⅔ cup So Delicious Dairy Free Original Almond Plus Almond Milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup dairy-free margarine (or coconut oil or ghee)
1½ cups cane sugar
¾ cup So Delicious Dairy Free Plain Cultured Coconut Milk (Yogurt)
2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a loaf pan. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. In a large bowl, beat together dairy-free margarine with sugar until light and creamy. Add the coconut milk yogurt and vanilla extract and mix well. Add half the flour mixture, mix, then add the almond milk, mix again, and finally end with the remaining flour mixture until combined. Remove 1/2 cup of the batter to a small bowl and mix in the cocoa powder to make a small amount of chocolate batter. Pour vanilla cake batter into the prepared pan, then scoop the chocolate batter on top. Use a knife or skewer or chopstick to swirl batter lightly. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool. Cake can be stored covered for 2-3 days at room temp, or 5-6 days in the fridge. Makes 10 slices.

Kalua Pig (Crockpot)

Busy day? Start this in the morning and it will be nearly ready when you get home. Add a little cabbage, cook a little rice, wait 30 minutes and dinner is DONE!

1 (3ish lb) pork roast
2 Tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp liquid smoke
1/2 head green cabbage, coarsely chopped
Hot cooked rice

Prick fork all over with tines of a fork, piercing the meat. Rub salt over entire roast, paying attention to the holes. Rub roast with liquid smoke. Place roast in the crockpot and cook on low for 10 hours. During last 30 minutes of cooking add half a head of cabbage that's roughly chopped. Serve over hot, cooked rice.

There is Life After Spaghetti-O's

Close to two years ago, I ran across a recipe on a blog I stalk  read MSPI Mama. She had figured out how to recreate Spaghetti-Os! My son was immediately in heaven...lol. I follow her recipe, making sure to add the nutritional yeast and I also add 1 Tbsp sugar to the pot. It gives it that slight sweetness that spaghetti-o's have. For those who don't know, nutritional yeast is a powerhouse of a food...it's super rich in B vitamins, and it just so happens to have a slightly cheesy, nutty flavor. It's awesome to add to dishes that need a little cheesy flavor boost. Your local natural foods store should carry it.

With no further ado... here is the Spaghetti-O's recipe on MSPI Mama's blog....

Magic Bars

Magic Bars are...well...Magic! Some call them 7 Layer Bars or Hello Dollys, but I grew up calling them Magic Bars. You will need a prepared recipe of Sweetened Condensed Coconut Milk (see previous post) for this recipe.

1/2 c shortening, coconut oil, or ghee
2 c safe graham cracker crumbs
Flaked coconut
Safe semi sweet chocolate chips
Chopped nuts of choice
anything else your heart desires as toppings...
1 recipe Sweetened Condensed Coconut Milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Add shortening to a 9x13 pan, and put in the oven to melt the shortening. Remove pan from oven and swirl melted shortening to distribute evenly in the pan. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs evenly over the melted shortening and press lightly to form a crust. Add a handful or two each of flaked coconut, safe chocolate chips, chopped nuts, chopped MSPI safe candy bars, dried fruit, whatever you like. Just distribute toppings evenly over the crust. Pour the sweetened condensed coconut milk evenly over the top of everything, making sure to coat the top as much as possible (paying attention to the edges too). Bake for about 30 minutes or so, until the edges are golden brown and bubbly and the top is light brown. Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting into bars. They will fall apart if you cut them when hot.

Sweetened Condensed Milk

There are so many times you go to make a dessert and need sweetened condensed milk... I used to use it quite a bit. So...here's a safe version!!!

Sweetened Condensed Coconut Milk

1 (14 oz) can coconut milk (full-fat)
1/2 c granulated sugar

In a medium pot, bring the coconut milk to a boil, stirring frequently. Watch closely, because once it starts to boil, it will boil over in a heartbeat. Turn heat down so the coconut milk is simmering and stir in the sugar, whisking until it's completely dissolved. Allow to simmer for 30-45 minutes, until the volume is reduced by half. Remove from heat and cool completely before using in recipes. Store in fridge in a covered container. It should last a week or more.

New Potatoes and Peas

This is one of my son's favorite dishes! Grandma makes it every time we come visit.

Steam some new potatoes with some freshly shelled peas (if you can get them. If not, diced regular potatoes and frozen peas are good too!).

In a saucepan, melt 2 Tbsp of either MSPI safe margarine or clarified butter (ghee) for each 2 cups of sauce you want to wind up with. Add an equal measure of flour to the hot, melted margarine/clarified butter and stir for a minute or two. You don't want to color the roux, just cook the raw taste off the flour. Add 1 1/2 cups rice milk for each 2 Tbsp of margarine/clarified butter used, stirring constantly until it comes to a boil and thickens. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup MSPI safe coffee creamer (gives it that nice creamy taste). Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sauce will be a little thin. That's OK...the potatoes will help thicken it up a bit. Pour the sauce over the steamed potatoes & peas, stirring to coat. Add a little more salt and pepper, if needed.

Raspberry Chocolate Muffins

4 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
12 oz fresh raspberries
3 to 4 oz MSPI safe dark chocolate, grated
1.5 cups rice milk
2/3 cup oil
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add raspberries and grated chocolate and toss to coat with flour mixture. In a separate bowl combine the rice milk, oil and eggs, whisking until thoroughly combined. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients all at once. Mix the dry into the wet, JUST until the dry ingredients are wet (no more than 12 to 15 strokes). Batter will be very lumpy! Scoop into jumbo size muffin liners (makes 20 jumbo muffins) or into regular size muffin liners (have no idea how many it would make...more than 20!). Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out cleanly. These freeze nicely!

Chicken Pot Pie

Who doesn't love a rich, steaming pan of creamy, lovely, chicken pot pie? My family has always loved it, and I had a darn good (and darn easy) recipe for one. Only one problem: It was full of DAIRY!!!

I set about to making my own dairy-free version, and came up with a great one! Even my husband doesn't realize it's dairy-free. The sauce takes a few minutes, but it's the most time consuming part of this whole process. Amounts are relative. I never measure, so it's all just approximation.

Chicken Pot Pie

2 cups diced or shredded chicken (cooked)
2 cups frozen peas and carrots vegetable blend
1 cup diced potato (small dice)
1 double crust MSPI-safe pie crust

Line pie pan with pie crust. Add chicken, veggies and potato. Pour sauce over everything, coating evenly. Top with remaining crust and flute edge. Cut vents in top of pie crust. Bake at 400 for about 30 minutes, until crust is golden brown.

Sauce:

2 (ish) cups chicken broth
1 (ish) cup rice milk
1 (ish) cup non-dairy coffee creamer (plain)
1/4 cup MSPI safe margarine
1/2 cup finely diced onion
1/4 cup flour
Salt & pepper
Garlic powder
Worcestershire sauce (check that it's MSPI safe)
Ground mustard

In a pot, melt margarine. Add onion and cook over medium heat until onion softens and turns translucent. Sprinkle flour over onion/margarine mixture. Cook, stirring constantly for a minute or two. You don't want to brown the flour, just cook the raw taste off it. Whisk in rice milk and coffee creamer. Bring to a boil while stirring constantly to thicken. Stir in chicken broth. Add a few shakes of salt and pepper, a few shakes of garlic powder, a slosh of MSPI safe Worcestershire, and a pinch or two of ground mustard. Taste. Adjust seasonings until it's how you like it. Add a little more liquid if it's too thick (either broth or creamer). If it's not 'chicken' flavored enough for you and the texture is spot on, then add a little MSPI safe chicken bouillion to pump up the chicken flavor without thinning the sauce out.

Milk Options

There are a lot of "milk" options out there, and it can be very confusing! Oat milk, hemp milk, coconut milk, rice milk, hazelnut milk, almond milk, cashew milk...so many possibilities!

The first thing to keep in mind when choosing a milk alternative is nothing tastes like dairy milk except dairy milk! None of the options taste like "milk". They each have a different flavor, and some are suited to some things more than others. I personally haven't tried hemp milk or oat milk, so I can't comment on them. When we eliminated dairy milk from my son's diet, we switched to chocolate almond milk for drinking and for using on cereal. His preference before the switch was always chocolate milk, so I thought starting with a chocolate version of the non-dairy milk would be the easiest, and I chose almond milk because almond milk naturally has a higher fat content that rice milk, and therefore would hopefully have a better 'mouth feel' than the others. My son loves chocolate almond milk, and I think it's pretty good too (reminds me of rocky road ice cream).

Once I started cooking, I realized the need for keeping different milk alternatives in the house. I found that almond milk has a fairly strong taste, and it changes the taste of baked goods (yup...found that out the hard way!). For most baking and cooking, I use rice milk. If I'm looking for a slightly sweet flavor and a richer, creamier, buttery texture, I use coconut milk (which is an excellent source of medium chain fatty acids). For sauces (white sauce, gravies, etc.) I typically use a combination of rice milk and non-dairy creamer, either with or without broth.

Don't be afraid to buy small bottles of different types of milk and experiment with each of them in different ways, for different uses. Find out what works for you!

What About Pizza Cheese?

The big question when making pizza for those with MSPI is what to do about the cheese. Some prefer to leave the cheese off completely and just do tomato sauce with various classic pizza toppings. Others use cheese substitutes with varying degrees of success (not all dairy free cheese is created equal). My family uses a fabulous dairy- and soy-free cheese substitute. You must read labels carefully, as many dairy-free cheeses have a soy base, and a popular rice cheese (which appears dairy-free) has casein, a milk protein. Another issue is the melt. Many dairy-free cheeses are a bit 'plastic' and don't melt very well. Luckily, I knew about Daiya Vegan Cheese Shreds, and we love them! Daiya cheese melts and strings like dairy cheese, without the dairy. It doesn't taste exactly like dairy cheese, but it tastes similar, and is one of the best on the market that we've found. Daiya isn't available everywhere yet, but they are constantly expanding. Check out their website to see if a store near you carries their product!

Our Story

When my son was a baby, the pediatrician recommended I use soy formula since I was both nursing and supplementing with formula, since soy formula is supposedly easier to digest. There was a distinct change in his digestion starting at 2.5 weeks of age. Instead of newborn pasty poo, he passed hard poo, and was in a lot of pain. It wasn't long until we realized he couldn't tolerate soy. We were prepared for that reaction though, as the Husband's family has a long history of soy intolerance. Switching to a milk-based formula was better, but still a bit problematic. I didn't think much of it, though, since he seemed to do better than before.

At the age of 2, he continued to have severe constipation issues, and he was put on Miralax by the pediatrician. We avoided overt forms of soy (but never cut out 'hidden' soy), and continued with the Miralax regimine. Fast forward 5 years... at the age of 7.5 years, his digestive issues became much more pronounced and things were going downhill. I finally gave up with the pediatrician and began researching things on my own, and thanks to a friend, I learned about Milk Soy Protein Intolerance (MSPI). The more I read, the more I wanted to learn. It fit my son to a 'T'. As of April 1, 2011, he has gone dairy and soy free, and he's a much happier kid when he's not had anything with dairy or soy. The pedi was confident that after a time, when I began re-introducing dairy and soy into his diet again, that he would be able to handle things on not only a derivative level, but to have milk products cooked or baked into food items. I've discovered over the summer that's not the case. The true derivative level is OK for us... but even small amounts of foods with casein, whey, soy protein isolate or anything that resembles milk or soy sends us back to square one with digestive issues.

I was very overwhelmed at the beginning of this journey and had NO IDEA what to do and what we were going to eat! My son has never been a huge meat eater, relying more on dairy then meat for his protein needs (milk, chocolate milk, cheese, etc.). Once I cut these out of his diet, he had normal bowels for the first time in his life! He's healthier and happier, and that, combined with the absence of pain, is motivation for me to continue! So, I thought I'd put all my MSPI friendly recipes in one spot...not only as a reference for myself, but hopefully it will help someone who is scratching their head and saying, "Now what???"

I make as many things as MSPI friendly as possible so I don't have to make two different meals each time I cook. My husband has not been terribly excited about some of the dairy/soy-free foods, but I've gotten things to a point where he rarely realizes I've made something MSPI safe! I know if it passes the Husband's test, it should pass most people's test! Let me know what you think!