Sweethearts Candy Blog's

I had another post I was going to run today, but the influx of e-mails in my inbox have prompted me to re-run a post that is very timely for the holidays.

A little over a month ago I asked parents of non-allergic kids NOT to bake for the allergic ones. My reasons? Cross-contact, lack of food allergy education and risk of allergic reaction due to lack of understanding. Also, studies have shown that desserts cause the most allergic reactions. Many kids also experience allergic reactions while at school: my daughter has.

With the winter holidays upon us, I am now getting many, many e-mails from well-intentioned moms who want to bake for the allergic kids in their classroom. This post is for them. First of all THANK YOU for caring. I, and the other moms who deal with food allergies, seriously appreciate your concern for our kids. You rock.

Secondly, and don't get your feelings hurt now: Please don't offer to bake for my allergic child. The only exception would be that your child has the EXACT SAME allergies as another child and you have kitchen free of those particular allergens.

I know it's hard to grasp, but your cookies could land a kid in the hospital. Put yourself in our shoes: would you want others, who may not be quite sure how to go about it, to bake for your severely food-allergic child?

I urge everyone interested to follow the link to my original post. Here I outline all the reasons why non-allergic peeps baking for the allergic is a bad idea.

A much better idea: Bring something with a label that's not homebaked. Or bring non-edible treats.

One other note that I will follow up on later: Almond extract. Don't use almond extract for the nut-allergic.

Dealing with nut allergies isn't like trying to get out of a parking ticket, unfortunately. When you are severely allergic, wiggle room doesn't exist with regard to what you ingest. Either you're allergic to nuts or you're not and if you are, you just avoid anything that says "almond." Period. Unless you want to risk the ticket, i.e., the possibly fatal trip to the emergency room.

Sorry if I sound cranky but there is real lack of education out there and I am concerned for all the nut-allergic kiddoes as they head to their winter parties or what have you.

Allergic families, this is for you. Please step up! Offer to bring something so that the room moms and family members aren't put in a position where they even feel like they have to bring a treat specifically for your allergic child. Be proactive and it will pay off, I promise. Your kids will appreciate your involvement, too.

Readers, your thoughts? Am the only one worried about this?

With the holiday baking season upon us, (yum!) I've had several e-mails about the safety of vanilla and other baking extracts. This is obviously a big concern for those of us who bake nut-free because most companies also produce almond extract.


I contacted three of the biggest manufacturers of vanilla extract and baking products: McCormick, Nielsen-Massey and Wilton. I'm very happy to report that 2 out of 3 of them don't even use "real" almond for their almond extract. Wilton, as most of you may have discovered already, is the most challenging, since they do have peanuts and tree nuts in their facility, even though some items are not sharing production lines. If you'd like to use their products, I'd say it's your call to make. Also, you may have to do some digging about each individual product. Their response below contains more info.

OK, here's what each company had to say in response to my e-mails inquiring about the safety of their extracts.


McCormick: "McCormick and Co. does not use peanuts or tree nuts in any of our facilities. The Oil of Bitter Almond used in our Pure Almond Extract is extracted from apricot kernels, not the almond itself."



Nielsen-Massey: "All of our products are nut free. We do not process anything with tree nuts in our facility. In fact our Almond Extract is actually made from bitter almond oil which comes from stone fruit pits such as peaches. Please be assured that all of our products are safe from nut allergens."


Wilton: "I have attached a link from our website that displays our vanilla extracts and the following allergy information:

http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=3E30D833-475A-BAC0-52C00F6FD95206EF&fid=78453C7E-475A-BAC0-57C37A0C5D55907A

No Peanuts/treenuts in the product but there are peanuts/treenuts present in the facility

http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=3E314C89-475A-BAC0-56036B0DE5130990&fid=78453C30-475A-BAC0-5A9F9766D10A9E08

No Peanuts/Treenuts in the product but there are peanuts/treenuts present in the facility

As far as our sprinkles and decorations are concerned, because we are very specific when it comes to food allergies, if you would kindly provide me with a few stock numbers from our website of some decorations that you are interested in because we want to make sure that we provide you with the correct information."

Welcome to October! Once again it's time for the "Nut-Free Recipe of the Month."

This month's recipe is courtesy of Heather at http://www.spewdfree.com/, a site that offers peanut-free, egg-free, dairy-free and wheat-free recipes. The following chocolate chip cookie recipe does not contain wheat, eggs, nuts or dairy, so it will be useful to have on hand if you have kids (or know kids) with multiple food allergies.

Thanks, Heather! You can also find a link to her site on this blog under the heading "Nut-Free Food."

SPEWD Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup dairy free, soy free margarine, softened
1 recipe for egg replacer (mix together 1 1/2T oil, 1 1/2T water and 1t baking powder)
3/4 cup rice flour
3/4 cup oat flour
3/4 cup tapioca flour
1t baking soda
1/2t salt
1 package (10 oz) soy free, dairy free chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together sugars, flours, baking soda and salt. Add margarine and egg replacer. Mix thoroughly. Fold in chocolate chips. Drop rounded tablespoons full of cookie dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes until golden brown.

I'm always looking for allergy-free recipes so please feel free to send yours along. I'll give you full credit, of course, and a link to your blog or web site if you have one. Contact me at nut-freemom@sbcglobal.net. Thanks!

If you have a child with a nut allergy, you will soon come to know the "Baking Mom" intimately--because it will be one of the roles you'll be asked to adopt. I view the title of class "Baking Mom" as an honorific I have come to cherish.

In my travels around the Internet lately, I've encountered a troubling "backlash" against peanut/nut-allergic kids and their parents. And this backlash is cropping up in the darnedest places!

Case in point: this morning I opened an e-mail from a recipe newsletter and was looking for a banana bread recipe. (It's cold here in Chicago and I've got brown bananas. Perfect!). One of the links took me to a recipe for Double Banana Bread. Turns out that the recipe contained nuts galore (including a nut-crunch cereal) but here's what really caught my eye: the posts below the recipe. Apparently--and I'm playing detective here based on what the posts had to say-- a few people must have mentioned that the recipe was not "nut-allergy friendly." These posts have been deleted, however. All that remains are posters having absolute fits about the people who had chimed in about nut allergies.

The nut allergy posters were told to "shut up," (and I quote: "everyone with nut allergies shut up!") and to "stop making life miserable for the rest of us," called "a bunch of whiners" and accused of being "the type of people who would sue the sidewalk if their kid fell down on it."

Huh??? How have things gotten so out of hand? Why are people so angry at folks with peanut and nut allergies?

I have one idea. Unlike other medical conditions, food allergies inconvenience (that's the word I hear the most anyway) other people, especially parents of school children. For example, if your child has something like asthma or diabetes, most likely other parents won't hear about it, unless they are close friends of the child with the medical problem. They won't get notes sent home with lists of foods, they don't have anything they have to do unless they choose to associate with the child having the medical condition.

A lot of people don't want to make adjustments for others' needs. And not to sound super-sappy, but: wouldn't the world be a better place if we did?

For people who aren't parents and who are upset by those who are vocal about their kids' or their own nut allergies--what can I say? Walk a mile in our shoes and then we can talk.

I can choose to leave nuts out of a banana bread recipe or any recipe for that matter. That's the easy part. What I can't do is prevent other people from being angry at my child for something that's not her fault--or mine. And that makes me sad.