Birthday Dinner catering for food intolerances

It was my son’s birthday this week.  We were away and came home on his birthday.  I made a magic bean cake upon coming home which we had after dinner that night.  (I’m sure my family still does not know what’s in it!)  The next night we had a birthday dinner with the extended family.   What do you cook to feed 14 people that includes 2 people with a number of food intolerances?  Everything on the menu was food that my son and my husband could both eat.

So what was on the menu?

Nibbles

Sweet Potato & Cashews Dip

Roasted Pumpkin with cashew & Parmesan Dip

Served with rice crackers and carrot strips

These were bought dips.  I was going to make my own version of these but just didn’t have time.  Technically my son shouldn’t eat the pumpkin one because of the parmesan but this was the only dairy in the whole menu so it was ok.  This is one reason I want to make my own dairy-free version.  My husband can’t eat these because of the cashews but he wouldn’t anyhow.

Mains

Quick Chilli Beef (very mild)

Tric’s Mince (This is a version of our friend’s nacho style mince)

Served with your choice of wraps to make burritos’ (not GF but dairy, soy & sulphite free), tacos or corn chips for nacho’s

Other toppings included:

• cheese
• tomato
• lettuce
• carrot
• mild taco sauce
• dairy-free “sour cream”

Dessert

My son asked for cashew custard.  We made this with macadamias so that my husband could eat it.  For some reason it turned out quite runny, I have made it a number of times and it has been quite thick.

To go with the custard we had:

Apple Crumble (used this apple & persimmon oat slice recipe to do the apples but just used apples and not persimmons and made up my own topping from looking at the recipe used for the apples as well as this apple-berry custard crumble recipe.)

Creamy Coconut Vanilla Rice Pudding (My jug leaked and when I went to heat the rice pudding to serve it was very thick so I added some almond milk.  My brother whose favourite dessert is rice pudding commented that this tasted like a normal rice pudding.)

Cake

For the cake I used our go to dairy free & egg free cake.   I just use gluten-free flour & baking powder instead of self-raising wheat flour.

In the next few weeks I will post some the recipes I used including my cake recipe.

What do you do to make birthday food friendly for yourself or family or friends who have food intolerances?