What do you give to the free-from love in your life who can’t eat anything?
Over the last 4 years we’ve covered a lot of free-from options for almost every occasion… but it only just occurred to me (this morning!) that we’ve never covered Valentines day. When I think of Valentines day inspired sweets, I usually think of anything chocolatey, cherry, strawberry or apple based. So, if you have someone (adult) and special in your life that can’t eat dairy, soy, gluten, egg or nuts (but is ok with coconut) then check out some of our ideas for a sweet (free-from) Valentines day:-)
Self-saucing chocolate pudding
You don’t need a fancy heart-shaped ramekin to make this self-saucing chocolate pudding (but it would look really cute in one and I just found some this morning in my local supermarket – see pic above:-). If you’d like to make this recipe, watch me (Lisa) make this recipe in the video here, and get the recipe in our Dessert Recipes book.
Homemade chocolate (milk chocolate or white chocolate – both free-from friendly)
Again, you don’t need cute little heart-shaped molds to make these chocolates (although I just found some today when I found the ramekins) see pic above:-). Any shaped small silicon mold will work, although I’ve used mini cupcake patty-pans before too. Making your own chocolate is surprisingly easy and quick (if you have the ingredients). You can see the video of Hayley making milk chocolate here (second recipe in the episode). The process for making the milk chocolate and the white chocolate is very similar. You can get the milk chocolate and the white chocolate recipes in our Kid’s Party Food book.
Short Breads
I used to love the buttery taste of shortbread, but when dairy went seriously off the menu, so did shortbread. It wasn’t until I created a butter alternative last year though, that I realised I could now make a free-from friendly shortbread. If you don’t have a heart-shaped cookie cutter, you could also use a scone cutter. They’re pretty easy to make, watch how to make them in the video here, and get the recipe in our Christmas Book.
We’ve also got a chocolate shortbread recipe in our Kid’s Party Food book .
Jam Tart
There are two ways you can make this jam tart. One is using the shortbread pastry e.g see this pic:
and the other is with our Basic Sweet Potato Pastry (you can get both recipes in our Dessert Recipes book).
(I made my own plum jam in the jam tart in this picture – I haven’t written that recipe up yet, so you can save some time by using a commercial jam that’s suitable for your diet. If you can’t find one, let me know, and I will write up my jam recipe. When it comes to jam, my personal favourites are black cherry, forest fruits (I think that’s the fantasy/ romance writer in me that loves the imagery of that;-) and plum.
Apple Pie
Historically apples were associated with Aphrodite (Greek goddess of love), so when it comes to baking for your sweetheart, I think it’s hard to go past a rustic homemade apple pie, made with love. We’ve got a simple apple pie recipe (with the Basic Sweet Potato Pastry) in our Dessert Recipes book.
Free-from friendly Cheesecake
If you’re after a ridiculously decadent, and fancier looking cake, then you might like to check out my new cheesecake recipe. This one is very very rich but delicious! Watch how to make the filling here and learn how to make a free-from base here, and you can get the recipe for the filling in our Dessert Recipes book.
Anyway, hopefully this gives you some ideas and options. We’ve got a lot more dessert recipes that I haven’t listed in this post so to check them out, look at the pictures on each of the individual book pages.
In the ebooks we’ve included the links to the recipes that have accompanying videos too – so don’t worry that you’ll have to keep coming back to this post. It’s all in the books (with more details too).
Christmas Recipes (2nd Edition)
