Start Here
If you are starting here, this is a great time to quickly review what this site is about and how to navigate it with some helpful resource pages.
As a professional pastry chef with 20+ years of experience in the industry, I decided I had to take my recipes and make them allergy friendly for my youngest son, Casey. He is 3 and has been allergic to over 30 foods, as well as having FPIES and on the bubble for EoE, since his first testing at 4 months old. It is certainly difficult for us, as well as the rest of the huge food allergy community here in the United States and abroad. I have done my best to start this website with easy, delicious base recipes that we all struggle to find safely at first, like crackers and pancakes. I’m not coming to this project as an award-winning photographer, just someone who is relearning her craft to make our food world more inclusive. I will continually add more recipes and posts and build this site, which has become so important to me. I really like explaining the how’s and why’s and offering as many subsitutions as possible because one person’s safe is another’s allergy. Nobody, especially a child, should be denied anything as simple as a dessert treat…I’m hoping this little corner of the Internet will offer you options.
Here are some of the resource pages I’ve put together to help navigate my site and recipes.
How Are the Recipes Written for Allergies?
This is written specifically to describe which allergies I never will include, and which are in the Top 8 gray area for us, like soy. I explain how I will try and substitute in as many ways as possible to be accessible for many allergies. I have Casey’s list of allergies for your own avoidance references to compare.
Keeping the Kitchen Safe
I wrote this post to explain what our comfort zone and the protocols we take in the KBFC house to ensure Casey’s safety. We do keep a lot of his allergens in the home, and I explain how we safely address that. I offered tips on what I do to keep our kitchen area safe while cooking, baking, and storing safe vs. unsafe items.
My “Gotta Have It” Equipment List
As a professional chef, I have very specific likes and dislikes as to what I am attached to in the kitchen. Although I certainly don’t expect you to run out and get everything, I wanted to offer some things I feel are super helpful, most especially a scale and proper sheet pans.
Favorite Brands
As I stated a few times, I call and vet 99% of the products I buy before I use them for Casey due to (mainly) his multiple seed allergies. His first anaphylactic reaction which went bi-phasic and saw him intubated was to sunflower and flax butter and seeds in a bar. Very often, “natural flavors” is hidden seeds, mainly sesame. I have called, emailed and routinely use all of these products but please, do your own research. What is safe/unsafe for us may not be for your family’s needs.
Substitutions for Your Safe Ingredients
In this article I talk about how to make as many swaps for your safe needs as possible. Whether it be eliminating dairy, eggs, or gluten, I have given answers and explanations on how you can alter your recipes, as well as offering options in each individual recipe.
How to Properly Weigh and Measure
I find this to be one of the most important resource posts because allergy friendly baking is a whole new beast, especially when eliminating eggs and wheat flour. I put my chef-instructor hat back on to show how to properly weigh and measure on a scale, shedding light on some common measuring mistakes, and offering pictures to help with the visuals.
I hope these resources will aid you in your food allergy baking journey, and I look forward to giving much more content as time goes on!
Additional Resources
Whether you are a newly diagnosed or veteran food allergy navigator, these pages provide a wealth of information to help guide along your journey. Please browse them and if you have any questions, bring them up with your board certified allergist.
Disclaimer
As we all know, reading labels and preparing food when managing allergies is a job within itself with much responsibility. All the brands I use are ones that I have contacted, and Casey has eaten safely. That being said, I must remind…
Please do your own research when deciding which products and foods are safe for the allergies you manage. These are the ones that are safe for our needs but may not be for you. Everyone has different comfort levels with manufacturing and production procedures.
And, as a friendly reminder, always have 2 epinephrine auto injectors on hand!