Someone's In the Kitchen with FPIES: Animal Cookies/Crackers

Involving kids in baking safe treats
is a great way to encourage
a positive relationship with food.

One of the things that I find I struggle with as an FPIES mom is making food fun for my kids. My youngest can eat very few packaged foods, and so anything fun he gets has to come from me. I try to find things both he and my oldest (now FPIES free!) can both enjoy while still not spending ALL my time in the kitchen.

I’ve long had a love-hate relationship with rolled and cut out cookies. Normally a (mostly) decent baker, I have always struggled with not ending up with various disasters when trying anything that involves cookie cutters and a rolling pin. However, I saw some plunger-style cookie cutters in the shape of zoo animals and I was smitten. I knew I had to have them, even before I had any idea what I would do for the dough.

 I came up with this recipe, adapted from these: http://www.isachandra.com/2008/11/chocolate-chip-cookies/, and fortunately, the plunger-style cookie cutters were a life saver. I’m never going back.

 Plunger-style cookie cutters are WONDERFUL

These cookies are tasty, fun for my boys, and not entirely unhealthy for a treat. That’s a win in my book!

Animal Cookies:

Ingredients

1/3 cup olive oil

½ cup turbinado sugar

¼ cup rice milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 ½ cups all purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

• In a medium bowl add oil, sugar, milk, and vanilla. Whisk together vigorously until mostly smooth.
• Add flours, salt, and baking soda and mix together.
• Chill dough for an hour.
  
• Preheat oven to 350°. Either grease a cookie sheet (can be done with your safe oil) or cover in parchment paper.
• Working in batches, roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to about a quarter of an inch thick and cut out shapes, then transfer to prepared cookie sheet.
• For extra definition, place cookie sheet with cookies in the fridge for about ten minutes.
• Bake for 8-12 minutes, depending on how big your cookies are, or until the tops are lightly browned.

A zoo's worth of animal crackers!

Recipe notes:

*You can use any safe oil, sugar, or milk.

*If vanilla isn’t a safe, they’re still ok without it.

*I have not tried this with alternative flours.

*These also make great graham-style crackers, just cut out square or rectangular shapes with a knife, and then prick a couple of times with a fork.

*The dough may be a little difficult to work with. If you're having trouble mixing it all together, use your hands!

This guest blog post written by Janie Dullard. Janie lives in Pearland, Texas with her husband and two children, both diagnosed with FPIES as infants, though her oldest has now outgrown it. She works as a freelance editor and has written a children's book, available here: https://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Tour-Yellow-Umbrella-Company/dp/0990799522/ . Her days are spent chasing after her two preschool-aged children, working, and concocting strange FPIES-friendly foods that her children will sometimes even eat.

Join Us in the Kitchen!

There are a lot of amazing parents out there, cooking up some amazing creations in the kitchen for their little ones affected by FPIES! Are you one of them? We would love to feature you in our monthly segment, “Someone's in the Kitchen with FPIES!” Write an article, about 500 words or less, featuring a special tip, an allergy-friendly cookbook review, and/or anoriginal recipe and submit it to us viacontact@thefpiesfoundation.org. Upon approval, recipes will be published on our website recipe section and your article will be featured here on The FPIES Foundation's blog. For more information and submission guidelines, contacta.lefew@thefpiesfoundation.org today!

Someone's in the Kitchen with FPIES: Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Contains: FIVE ingredients: millet, water, safflower oil, pure maple syrup, and mini-chocolate chips.

Does NOT contain: egg, baking soda, baking powder

Inspired by a recipe from a fellow FPIES mom (and her blog), and her recipe for Merry Muffins, I learned to create several baked treats from just this ONE recipe!  I took the ingredients and substituted my son’s safe ingredients and then used these to make not only the muffins safe for my son,  but found that  I could vary these few ingredients and make other things such as pancakes, crackers, and cookies.

A valuable thing that FPIES has taught me is how to be more creative (and brave!) with my baking.   One of these lessons is how to take a recipe and scale it down to a small amount of ingredients so that when I experimented, if it was a flop, I wasn’t losing as much of the high-cost/harder to obtain “safe” foods. 

During one of my experiments with varying ingredients, and after we found a safe chocolate chip, I created a chocolate chip cookie that my son loves, perhaps by sharing my recipe, it can help you come up with something  that can become a favorite for you too! 

Join Us in the Kitchen! 
There are a lot of amazing parents out there, cooking up some amazing creations in the kitchen for their little ones affected by FPIES! Are you one of them? We would love to feature you in our monthly segment, “Someone's in the Kitchen with FPIES!” Write an article, about 500 words or less, featuring a special tip, an allergy-friendly cookbook review, and/or an original recipe and submit it to us via contact@thefpiesfoundation.org. Upon approval, recipes will be published on our website recipe section and your article will be featured here on The FPIES Foundation's blog. For more information and submission guidelines, contact a.lefew@thefpiesfoundation.org today!

Written by Joy Meyer, Co-Director and mom to a child with FPIES, Post approved by the  Medical Advisory and Executive Boards of The FPIES Foundation 

Allergy Cookie and the Teal Pumpkin Project: UPDATE

July 2015 Update: A message from Tiffany Rogers of Allergy Cookie: “I regret to inform you that you that due to a number of factors, including recent changes in the terms and dependability of our suppliers, we have decided not to sell Teal Pumpkins for our Walk Team or on our website this year. The good news is that FARE’s Teal Pumpkin Project campaign is still alive and well and the food allergy community expects to continue to see a growth in support of it this year!  We are excited that Allergy Cookie will be helping to promote the Teal Pumpkin Project campaign and bring more awareness to food allergies, as well as encourage more people to use non-food treats to include ALL children.  Even though we won’t be selling pumpkins, my family still plans to reach out in our local community and encourage our friends, family, and neighbors to get involved.”

Tiffany Rogers founded a company called Allergy Cookie and they are offering specially designed Teal Pumpkins filled with non-food treats to handout on Halloween. They even have a special pumpkin available for FPIES - Food Protein Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome. 

Tiffany is the mother of a 3 year old child with severe multiple food allergies. She and her husband also suffer food in tolerances. Her son's birthday just so happens to be Halloween and when he turned 3 she didn't want to think about explaining to him why on his birthday he wouldn't be able to have any of the treats from trick-or-treating. That's when she heard about FARE's 'Teal Pumpkin Project.' 

Families participate in the 'Teal Pumpkin Project' by handing out non-food treats on Halloween and identifying their house as allergy-friendly by painting a pumpkin teal. 

'It was such a blessing,' Rogers says, 'to have my son receive treats while trick-or-treating on Halloween night he could keep.' 

Rogers points out food allergies are not one size fits all and that's where Allergy Cookie's Teal Pumpkin products come in. In June, they have been offering the pumpkins as part of a special fundraiser competition with proceeds benefiting FARE and a variety of different food allergy organizations, including the FPIES Foundation. 

The hope is to raise research money and awareness. Rogers asks those without allergies to participate in the 'Teal Pumpkin Project' and think about what it could mean for a child, like her son, on Halloween. 

For more information on Allergy Cookie or their Teal Pumpkin Fundraiser, and how you can order your Teal Pumpkin for Halloween, please visit their page http://www.allergycookie.com/tealpumpkinfundraiser/

This post was written by the Executive Board of The FPIES Foundation