hooray for tasty GFCF treats!

Last night we had Family Home Evening. That's not such a big deal, we have FHE almost every week...


But the tasty treat afterwards was a big deal to us!



Anna needed to stop by the health food store to pick up some specialty items we use for the boys, and as she was picking those items up, she saw a display (or maybe they were just on the shelf) for gluten free ice cream cones!! Anna's glee was heard throughout the store as she gazed upon them.

Duncan and Liam haven't had ice cream cones since they began the diet well over a year ago. We used to have ice cream cones rather frequently before then. Duncan especially liked ice cream cones and was bummed that he couldn't have them anymore. It bummed us out too.

Anna was super excited about the cones, but one thing remained... will the boys like them? For our tasty treat/refreshments, I made a batch of GFCF vanilla ice cream. I thought we'd just scoop it out as usual, and put those scoops in the cones. Anna was WAY ahead of me... she had already planned to put the ice cream in one of her frosting bags with a large star tip, and pipe the ice cream into the cones!

They looked exactly like the soft serve cones you can get at any number of places. Duncan's face lit up as he was handed his. Anna almost got "happy" tears.




There was no hesitation in devouring those cones.

Needless to say, the cones passed the taste test with flying colors! Duncan even declared they taste better than the regular cones he used to have. Liam was never a big fan of eating the cone part, but likes having a cone, so that made him happy. Funny thing about all this is, Anna had just tossed out our box of regular cones a couple weeks ago because Duncan would see them and ask for one and she always felt bad saying no. Now that we have the GFCF cones, there were no regular cones for the girls. So they got to have GFCF cones too. Now regular cones are on the shopping list.

A small triumph we had to share.

Ice Cream?

Kristi asked what I used to make ice cream the other night, since the boys are on that gluten and casein free diet.

Well, in case you were wondering too...

I use a very simple recipe of a combination of rice and almond milks, sugar and vanilla. That's it.

Sometimes I'll add another extract like mint or rum. Sometimes I'll add some chocolate syrup or a very mashed banana. I've even put in peanut butter.

It's also fun to put in some food coloring. That also helps to keep it from being the same every time.

We use a Cuisinart ice cream freezer. It's either a 1 or 1 1/2 quart size. We keep the freezing cylinder in the freezer, so it's ready to go at anytime. It only takes 15-20 minutes to make the ice cream.


Another thing I've done recently, is make my own GFCF peanut butter cups. I modified a recipe I found, and used GFCF ingredients to make the peanut butter middles; then used Trader Joe's semi-sweet chocolate chips (diary free), for the chocolate coating. They are very good. Duncan likes them a lot.

So those are some of the desserty things we've done on the GFCF diet.