Dreaming of an allergy-free Christmas?

Christmas can be an anxious time for people prone to allergies. Nuts, gluten-heavy flour, cream, butter and cheese are all foods commonly used in traditional Christmas dishes, which can make this a tricky time for sufferers.

It needn’t be so, but you need to be prepared to cook from scratch. The roast turkey itself isn’t too much of a problem, but the trimmings are often packed with allergy offenders; and Christmas pudding, Christmas cake and mince pies normally contain butter, wheat flour and nuts.

Don’t despair. Home-made versions of all these can easily be adapted to suit your needs – and the good news is they can all be made well before the mad Christmas rush begins.

Nuts  

Stuffing

• Try replacing chopped nuts and chestnuts with dried cranberries or roughly chopped apricots.

Puddings and pies

• Chopped nuts – used to add crunch – can be replaced with an equal quantity of roughly chopped apricots or dried figs.

Christmas pudding

• Substituted ground nuts with an equal quantity of plain flour and another tablespoon of butter or margarine for a little more richness. If you use margarine in your baking, check the label to make sure it does not contain nut-based oils.

Christmas cake

• Marzipan is made with ground almonds and almond essence, and so, instead, decorate your cake with dried, glazed fruit.
• Alternatively, brush with apricot jam and cover with home-made or bought fondant icing, rolled to 7mm thick to hide any bumps. Both methods should be done no earlier than a week before Christmas. 

Gluten  

Starters

• For a gluten-free soup, substitute wheat flour with an equal quantity of rice flour or cornflour for thickening
• Replace gluten-rich wheat noodles, pasta or pearl barley in recipes with gluten-free rice, buckwheat noodles or rice and millet pasta, beans, pulses and gluten-free bread.

Stuffing

• Sausagemeat stuffing usually contains ‘rusk’ – toasted breadcrumbs. You can make your own sausagemeat using gluten-free breadcrumbs, but these can make the stuffing taste heavy. Instead, try making this brown or white rice-based stuffing as a light, crumbly and delicious alternative. 

Gravy

• Start with a good home-made turkey stock. When you come to thicken the gravy, replace the 25g plain flour with an equal quantity of rice flour or corn flour.

Bread Sauce

• Substitute traditional white breadcrumbs for an equal quantity of gluten-free white breadcrumbs.

Cakes and puddings

• Replace plain flour with a gluten-free mixture of 50% rice flour, 25% ground almonds and 25% cornflour
• For gluten-free self-raising flour, add 1 teaspoon of gluten-free baking powder for every 110g gluten-free flour. To ensure the cake is moist, light and holds together, use 3 eggs for every 110g flour called for in the recipe.
• Replace breadcrumbs in Christmas pudding with an equal quantity of gluten-free breadcrumbs.
• Home-made nut-, gluten- and dairy-free mince pie recipes.

Liquids

• Watch out for barley wine, stout and ale as these all contain gluten. Gluten-free alternatives include apple or orange juice, rum, brandy, Earl Grey Tea and Grand Marnier.

Dairy  

Starters

• For a dairy-free soup, substitute any milk in the recipe with home-made stock, soya milk or rice milk. Thicken with a roux made from 2 tablespoons of neutral-flavoured vegetable oil as a substitute for every 40g butter.

Roast turkey

• Use olive oil rather than butter to moisten the bird.

Bread Sauce

• Use soya milk instead of cow’s milk and omit butter or cream.

Cakes and puddings

• Replace butter with an equal quantity of dairy-free margarine, and milk with the same amount of soya or rice milk.
• Suet, commonly used as the principle fat in Christmas pud, is dairy free.

Brandy butter

• This tastes oily if you substitute the butter with margarine. As a dairy-free alternative, make home-made crème anglaise (custard sauce) with soya milk, and flavour it with orange zest and a splash of Grand Marnier.

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