I am not sure why I have not made these before. I have made standard ‘rice krispie’ cakes so many times over the years but for some reason, I never thought about making a ‘Zac friendly’ version until this afternoon.
Zac had sports day at pre-school today and I promised him a treat when he got home. Sophia was also itching to get busy in the kitchen again, so I decided I should keep my promise but find a way to avoid ‘baking’ – my least favourite type of cooking.
That is why any ‘refrigerator’ cake is ideal for me. I am lazy and they require little or no skill and very few ingredients. It is very easy to swap in the dairy free chocolate and butter and the only other thing you need is your favourite gluten free and dairy free breakfast cereal.
It is easy to involve the children and they are lots of fun to make and decorate. My two are mad on ‘sprinkles’ and marshmallows at the moment. Obviously, I always have to read the label, but there are ‘safe’ marshmallows on the shelves, you just have to hunt.
I just found a standard recipe and adapted it to include our special ingredients. It was all done in less than fifteen minutes and that includes making a set for Sophia with her ‘normal’ cereal. We were careful not to cross contaminate but she did have the same chocolate as Zac. She is so used to his food that I think she actually really likes it now. I know I do.
The recipe I had found said it takes up to two hours to cool and set them in the fridge, but we couldn’t wait longer than half an hour and they were perfectly fine. Delicious in fact. Definitely worth a go.
Here’s how to do it.
200g chocolate – most recipes recommend dark, but I used a combination of Moo Free chocolate drops and the Asda own brand dairy free chocolate buttons. I also used a pack of their chocolate orange buttons, as it adds an extra dimension to the flavour. Just the tiniest hint of citrus. Yum.
50g butter – we used about 30g of Pure dairy free sunflower spread and about 20g of Groovy Food coconut oil. Again, this was purely for flavour, so if you don’t like coconut, just use 50g of Pure. As the chocolate melted with the coconut oil there was an aroma and taste(I couldn’t resist) of Bounty bars – very retro.
3 tablespoons of golden syrup
125g of your favourite cereal – I know cornflakes and rice krispies are traditional and you can get gluten free versions of these but we used the Nature’s Path Gluten Free Munch. To be honest I think we used more than 125g. The chocolate really melted down well and I just kept throwing in more handfuls of cereal until it looked like we had the right ratio to make a solid little cake!
Mini marshmallows – just for decoration, so you could leave them out if you don’t like them or can’t find any ‘safe’ ones. We also added a handful of sultanas. Zac loves them on everything and I have to agree with him, chocolate coated sultanas are a very delicious treat and make these little cakes even more special.
We used paper fairy cake cases. Probably about 20. Just arranged them all on a couple of plates and once the chocolate, syrup and ‘butter’ had melted and the cereal was mixed in, we spooned in big dollops of the mixture until each case was full.
We melted the chocolate in the ‘standard’ way, in a glass bowl resting on a pan of simmering water. The Pure and coconut melt just as well as butter and the dairy free chocolates all melt beautifully too. The mixture was soon very rich and glossy and the syrup made it very sweet and sticky. It is a slightly messy job mixing in the cereal but I think that is the point.
They probably need a couple of hours in a very cold fridge, but as I mentioned, we had a quick try after about half an hour and they had started to set and were very good. Highly recommended.
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Home made gluten free dairy free mince pie 🌲
Just started gluten and dairy free, how long untill noticeable results?
