We were delighted to receive a parcel recently from Go Free Foods containing beautifully presented samples of their products: chocolate brownies and macaroons.
Go Free is a relatively new company, started only last year, but is already having great success; the chocolate brownies won an award at the Free From Foods Awards earlier this month. This is a triumph for Charlotte, who runs the company: congratulations!
And the brownies are, undeniably, excellent (my daughter loved them). In my view, though, the macaroons are even better: soft and moist, just as I like them. Note that all the Go Free products contain almonds, so if you’re not an almond fan, these aren’t for you. But if you like almonds, you’ll really enjoy these goodies.
Go Free have a new website up, and you can order from there. It’s worth visiting, just to admire the photos of the cakes, which look just as good as they taste.
As well as running her gluten free business, Charlotte writes a free from blog at the Hello Magazine site. Not only that (wow, she’s a busy woman) she’ll be cooking live at the Allergy Show at the beginning of May. This is a 3-day event at Kensington Olympia (6-8 May), and she’ll be cooking at 14:45 on Sunday the 8th.
Do go and check out both her sites, and if you’ve tried the Go Free products, do let us know what you think.
Now my daughter has never had a chocolate eclair before, though she’s watched her siblings enjoy a ‘normal’ version of these. And – as many of you know – it isn’t fun to watch your child putting on a brave face when unable to join in a simple pleasure. And while I’m a decent plain cook, gluten free choux pastry is outside my range. I have tried! 
Floris Foods is a shop full of unusual gluten free and wheat free products, both savoury and sweet. Some are very familiar – restaurant staples here in the UK now, such as lasagne, cheesecake, tiramisu and profiteroles, though these are not usually available gluten free – and some are intriguingly new (to us, at least).
The quiche got a significant thumbs up, especially the nice short pastry, which has a lovely texture (and she particularly liked the smoked bacon version) while the panzerottini disappeared very quickly indeed – she even chose to eat these for breakfast. Look at the picture: you can see these are tiny little packets of pastry, filled with different savoury mixes.
I’ve seen the Outback biscuits in supermarkets, where I’m sure I’ve seen multipacks: small portion packs inside a bigger pack to buy. This was a single, bigger pack, but like so many of the gluten free products, multipacks seem to me to be the best plan, especially if your coeliac is young, so that the food stays fresh for longer. I know that several layers of packaging isn’t particularly ‘green’, but nor is discarding food because it’s gone off.
The other biscuits, the Lazy Day shortbread, have a much more adult taste. They’re also plain and dry, but that is how shortbread should be, and these have the texture of a shortbread too. Naturally, being shortbread, they are egg […]