Adrienne Martini, author of Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood and mother of a child with a gluten-free diet is back, and this time she's guest blogging at Scrambled CAKE. She agreed to do this even before she knew I was going to send her some of the organic gluten-free lollipops I snagged at the Candy Expo. Check out Adrienne's regular musings at Martininimade.
The old adage about surprises is doubly true when it comes to kids. Expected joys and challenges seem to follow the small set like puppies follow peanut butter.
My husband and I didn’t expect to have a kid with Celiac disease, which means that any form of gluten will destroy the villi lining her small intestine. Her diagnoses came quickly. It took six short weeks, a blood test and a biopsy to figure out why she’d stopped growing, had a host of bowel issues and was generally lethargic.
In six short weeks, her entire diet had to change. Wheat, barley and rye had to be eliminated.
At the time, it was monumental. Finding the gluten turned out to be a larger problem than eliminating the gluten. Wheat is pretty easy to ferret out, thanks to the FDA’s new labeling laws but it and barley extract can sneak past you in things like tomato soup or butterscotch chips.
You learn to get on top of it – and describing that process is worth its own very long essay. To sum up, our little Diva –who is almost five now and growing like a weed – eats rice pasta like she chowed on the wheat kind. We focus on what she can eat, like apples and blueberries and cheese. She knows how to protect her own tummy and will give you an earful about her needs in that special way that a preschooler can.
Still, one obstacle remained. We had no idea what to do about birthday parties. Whether they were at her preschool or at someone’s house, kids’ parties always have cake. Always. It’s a rule of childhood. So what could we serve her when all of the kids were snacking on their iced confections?
For a few months, I simply let her eat as much ice cream as she could hold. If I were feeling daring, I’d scrape off some frosting that hadn’t touched any of the cake beneath. (This is fraught with cross-contamination hazards and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are truly desperate.) Then I was flipping through our newspaper and discovered the recipe that changed everything: magical cream cheese cupcakes.
Essentially, these are mini-cheesecakes without any crust. What’s fabulous is that you can make a huge batch (with your kid, if he or she is interested) and freeze them. When a party arrives, you pop one in your bag and go. What’s even more fabulous is that you can dress them up in any gluten-free way that you like. Smear ‘em with frosting. Sprinkle them with colored sugars. Top with nuts and/or jam. The options are limited only by your kid’s imagination.
The magical cream cheese cupcakes
3 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened (I recommend using name brand cream cheese. My experiments with the store brands have been less than satisfying. Edible, certainly, but lumpy.)
1 cup sugar
5 eggs
1.25 tsp vanilla extract
jam, sprinkles, fruit, frosting, nuts
Preheat oven to 325. Line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake liners.
Beat (by hand or with a mixer) cream cheese, sugar and eggs. Add vanilla. Pour batter into muffin tins and bake 40 minutes.
These will settle a bit in the middle as they cool. Fill the resulting divot with whatever topping moves you and your kids. Enjoy!
Next up in the food allergy series: gluten-free dining in Chicago.
Showing posts with label desserts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label desserts. Show all posts
October 01, 2007
August 24, 2007
Chicago's Sweetest Farmer's Market
Originally posted at the Chicago Moms Blog.
Many people have posted about their for love the Green City Market, but my favorite city market takes place Thursday mornings at Eli’s Cheesecake World on the northwest side.
A typical trip to Eli’s means blowing the diet in a big way- they make tempting tarts, plump éclairs and at least eight varieties of cheesecake all calling like sirens from their lovely refrigerated display case. But on Thursdays you can purchase produce from local farms and products from area vendors to balance out all those luscious, sugary, buttery, and calorie-laden desserts.
It’s a small market, but a sweet one. The boys and I spent over 20 minutes ogling the produce from the Nichols Farm and Orchard. We laughed at the odd looking heirloom tomatoes, admired the cute, tiny pickle cukes, and questioned many items we’d never seen before. The vendor happily explained orange eggplants that resemble tiny pumpkins, lemon cucumbers that looked like gourds and offered up samples of everything that tempted us. We filled up our bags with a patriotic selection of fingerling potatoes-red, white and blue, half a dozen exotic eggplants*, lots of cukes and some interesting tomatoes.
We also purchased up some handcrafted Vietnamese goods from the fair-trade store 10,000 Villages, which had a booth on site. We picked up some tips on bicycling around Chicago and green cleaning supplies (you won't believe what you can do with a lemon) and learned that this year's Annual Cheesecake Festival will take place Sept. 15-16. This community celebration also serves as a fundraiser (foodraiser?) for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Donate two cans of food or $1 to the cause and your good deed will be rewarded with a slice of cheesecake- what a sweet way to introduce your little one to philanthropy.
Eli's Cheesecake World 6701 W Forest Preserve Drive (Harlem and Montrose), Chicago
Read up on Eli's factory tours (yum!) at Scrambled CAKE.
* We don't always get around to eating the exotic foods we buy. Sometimes we just watch them rot on the countertop.
Many people have posted about their for love the Green City Market, but my favorite city market takes place Thursday mornings at Eli’s Cheesecake World on the northwest side.
A typical trip to Eli’s means blowing the diet in a big way- they make tempting tarts, plump éclairs and at least eight varieties of cheesecake all calling like sirens from their lovely refrigerated display case. But on Thursdays you can purchase produce from local farms and products from area vendors to balance out all those luscious, sugary, buttery, and calorie-laden desserts.
It’s a small market, but a sweet one. The boys and I spent over 20 minutes ogling the produce from the Nichols Farm and Orchard. We laughed at the odd looking heirloom tomatoes, admired the cute, tiny pickle cukes, and questioned many items we’d never seen before. The vendor happily explained orange eggplants that resemble tiny pumpkins, lemon cucumbers that looked like gourds and offered up samples of everything that tempted us. We filled up our bags with a patriotic selection of fingerling potatoes-red, white and blue, half a dozen exotic eggplants*, lots of cukes and some interesting tomatoes.
We also purchased up some handcrafted Vietnamese goods from the fair-trade store 10,000 Villages, which had a booth on site. We picked up some tips on bicycling around Chicago and green cleaning supplies (you won't believe what you can do with a lemon) and learned that this year's Annual Cheesecake Festival will take place Sept. 15-16. This community celebration also serves as a fundraiser (foodraiser?) for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Donate two cans of food or $1 to the cause and your good deed will be rewarded with a slice of cheesecake- what a sweet way to introduce your little one to philanthropy.
Eli's Cheesecake World 6701 W Forest Preserve Drive (Harlem and Montrose), Chicago
Read up on Eli's factory tours (yum!) at Scrambled CAKE.
* We don't always get around to eating the exotic foods we buy. Sometimes we just watch them rot on the countertop.
August 23, 2006
Eli's Cheesecake World: life is uncertain; eat dessert first
Eli's Cheesecake World
6701 W Forest Preserve Drive (Harlem and Montrose), Chicago
(just down the block from the pyramid-shaped building at Wright College)
Specialty sandwiches ($6) in cafe from 11:00 - 2:00
What can we say about this little slice of heaven on Chicago's northwest side? It's not only the world headquarters and bakery for Eli's Cheesecake, they've also got a cafe and store. The boys and I showed up wearing our proverbial critic hats but later traded them in for hairnets to go on the factory tour. We arrived too late for the made-to-order artisan sandwiches like chicken salad with grapes and pecans, but grabbed a decent ready-made Caesar salad to tide us over until dessert. Dessert. Dessert.
I mean, you could come here for a cup of coffee and free wi-fi or to grab a gourmet grilled cheese, but you'd have to be a fool, or possibly a diabetic, to show up at Eli's and not eat dessert. Their cases are overflowing with delicious-looking desserts- and not just cheesecake. They've got eclairs, tarts...I asked my boys to write down the names of one or two of the most delicious-looking items, but they told me that was impossible to choose.
Here's what the world's most ticklish restaurant critics and their friends had to say about Eli's Cheesecake World. (Please note that all exclamation points appear at the request of the boys.)
Eli's is fun! Their cafe is good. They have desserts, sandwiches, and salads. They sell cheesecakes, little cakes, lemon meringue tarts and everything looks yummy.
Six-year-old Splinter says: Out of three thumbs down, I give it seven forks! (I've previously mentioned that we don't yet have a uniform rating system. What he means is that Eli's is more than twice the opposite of bad... in other words- great!)
The tours are cool and fun! And everything smells delicious. Really delicious. A tour guide shows you almost the whole place, but only staying on the path. Sometimes you go into a big freezer (we did this on a previous tour, but not today). The freezer room is for freezing the cheesecakes before they decorate them. The decorating room is cold, but not as cold as the freezer.
The room where they bake the cheesecakes is really hot--over 100 degrees F in the summer. The cheesecakes go on a cool conveyor belt. It is so cool to see them pour the batter and watch the cheesecakes go on the belt. It takes the cheesecake through the 70-foot-long tunnel oven and then up a big corkscrew cooling tower with about 19 curves. Then people take them off pans and put them on racks. Then they go to the freezer room and then the decorating room.
In the decorating room, we saw them making Chocolate-Covered Lava Cake for Wal Mart.
This is a cool tour! But if your brothers or sisters are under five years old, they have to stay home with a sitter.
They make over 100 kinds of cheesecake if you can believe it!
This tour is definitely recommended for kids!
6701 W Forest Preserve Drive (Harlem and Montrose), Chicago
(just down the block from the pyramid-shaped building at Wright College)
Specialty sandwiches ($6) in cafe from 11:00 - 2:00
What can we say about this little slice of heaven on Chicago's northwest side? It's not only the world headquarters and bakery for Eli's Cheesecake, they've also got a cafe and store. The boys and I showed up wearing our proverbial critic hats but later traded them in for hairnets to go on the factory tour. We arrived too late for the made-to-order artisan sandwiches like chicken salad with grapes and pecans, but grabbed a decent ready-made Caesar salad to tide us over until dessert. Dessert. Dessert.
I mean, you could come here for a cup of coffee and free wi-fi or to grab a gourmet grilled cheese, but you'd have to be a fool, or possibly a diabetic, to show up at Eli's and not eat dessert. Their cases are overflowing with delicious-looking desserts- and not just cheesecake. They've got eclairs, tarts...I asked my boys to write down the names of one or two of the most delicious-looking items, but they told me that was impossible to choose.
Here's what the world's most ticklish restaurant critics and their friends had to say about Eli's Cheesecake World. (Please note that all exclamation points appear at the request of the boys.)
Eli's is fun! Their cafe is good. They have desserts, sandwiches, and salads. They sell cheesecakes, little cakes, lemon meringue tarts and everything looks yummy.
Six-year-old Splinter says: Out of three thumbs down, I give it seven forks! (I've previously mentioned that we don't yet have a uniform rating system. What he means is that Eli's is more than twice the opposite of bad... in other words- great!)
The tours are cool and fun! And everything smells delicious. Really delicious. A tour guide shows you almost the whole place, but only staying on the path. Sometimes you go into a big freezer (we did this on a previous tour, but not today). The freezer room is for freezing the cheesecakes before they decorate them. The decorating room is cold, but not as cold as the freezer.
The room where they bake the cheesecakes is really hot--over 100 degrees F in the summer. The cheesecakes go on a cool conveyor belt. It is so cool to see them pour the batter and watch the cheesecakes go on the belt. It takes the cheesecake through the 70-foot-long tunnel oven and then up a big corkscrew cooling tower with about 19 curves. Then people take them off pans and put them on racks. Then they go to the freezer room and then the decorating room.
In the decorating room, we saw them making Chocolate-Covered Lava Cake for Wal Mart.
This is a cool tour! But if your brothers or sisters are under five years old, they have to stay home with a sitter.
They make over 100 kinds of cheesecake if you can believe it!
This tour is definitely recommended for kids!
July 24, 2006
Read Up and Dine Out: The Magic Pan (crepes)
Many moons ago one of my boys picked up a book titled Crepes by Suzette. This fun, colorful book is full of mixed media collages based on photos that author Monica Wellington took on her trips to Paris. Readers follow Suzette as she takes her crepe cart around the city. In addition to a crepe recipe that has become a favorite of my boys, the book has a glossary of French words as well as descriptions of the famous artwork that Wellington alludes to in her collages.
But perhaps you're not up for making crepes. Then by all means, run, don't walk, to The Magic Pan. Remember The Magic Pan from your youth in Chicago? I only recalled the name of this revived Lettuce Entertain You joint. I must not have eaten their food as a child, because their chocolate crepes are unforgettable. Yum! If you are on Weight Watchers you may consider skipping a day or two worth of meals to save your points for one of these. They also offer savory crepes including a pizza crepe that the boys still talk about, but didn't seem to enjoy so much when eating it. The savory crepes seemed very rich; I recommend saving all those calories for dessert.
Since our visit to Magic Pan crepes have become a morning staple in our house. They're a good substitute for pancakes. I even find them easier, less messy, and more versatile than pancakes as you can pair them with a variety of fillings.
For a good dessert crepe, take a single-size Dove Bar ice cream treat (bonbons? I can't think of their name and they are long since devoured) and let it melt in a hot, fresh crepe. Not quite the *magic* of The Magic Pan's chocolate crepes, but a close second.
But perhaps you're not up for making crepes. Then by all means, run, don't walk, to The Magic Pan. Remember The Magic Pan from your youth in Chicago? I only recalled the name of this revived Lettuce Entertain You joint. I must not have eaten their food as a child, because their chocolate crepes are unforgettable. Yum! If you are on Weight Watchers you may consider skipping a day or two worth of meals to save your points for one of these. They also offer savory crepes including a pizza crepe that the boys still talk about, but didn't seem to enjoy so much when eating it. The savory crepes seemed very rich; I recommend saving all those calories for dessert.
Since our visit to Magic Pan crepes have become a morning staple in our house. They're a good substitute for pancakes. I even find them easier, less messy, and more versatile than pancakes as you can pair them with a variety of fillings.
For a good dessert crepe, take a single-size Dove Bar ice cream treat (bonbons? I can't think of their name and they are long since devoured) and let it melt in a hot, fresh crepe. Not quite the *magic* of The Magic Pan's chocolate crepes, but a close second.
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