My lovely friend Rachel has had the misfortune of being diagnosed as intolerant to Gluten, Dairy and soy. She is also highly allergic to peanuts and some other nuts.
This is a problem as Cakes and treats made without proper flour are often a little gross. I tried to make Rachel a gluten and dairy free birthday cake- it didn't go well. It was a bit like a large biscuit.
I expressed my concern that her intolerance is limiting her treat and cake intake and I like making cakes for my friends, So we came up with a plan...
Make things that are naturally gluten and dairy free first then move on to using gluten free stuff.
We started with Macarons!
We needed egg whites, ground almond, caster sugar, icing sugar. vanilla essence, gel dye and we cheated by using Betty Crocker icing for the filling (it is shockingly dairy free!)
I don't have an electric whisk so we used a hand whisk. Rachel was very impressed with my whisk - it has a little cage and a ball inside it.
We got a little confused when making the first batch and made it far to runny, 'pipping it' didn't really happen, it was more of a pouring action
We gave up trying to make them neat and just flooded the tray.
It was very funny. We just kept laughing - which probably didn't help!
It was not good - We threw it away and tried again.
(the best sad face ever)
Our next batch was MUCH better!
We left them to rest for over an hour, we forgot about them whilst we were chatting.
Baking with a good friend is great.
Chatting over a cup of tea whilst baking is even better.
We eventually baked them and the turned out like this...
They aren't very uniform or as shiny as they are meant to be, but we still felt proud of our creations.
They didn't crack which I think is down to the excessive resting.
Rachel liked her's best dipped in a cup of coffee - we couldn't eat too many they are very sweet!
We will continue our baking adventures soon. It is really fun to have baking plans and to experiment with a friends, if it all goes wrong we can laugh and start again.
