Review: The Divvies Bakery Cookbook

This review is cross-posted here from our other blog, Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile.  Please visit there to enter to the give-away!

As regular readers of Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile may know, our little bookworm has a host of food allergies (including, among others, egg, milk, wheat, and nuts).  I was excited to receive a copy of a new allergy-friendly cookbook this month, and for the chance to not only review it, but to provide a give-away copy to one of our readers!

 The Divvies Bakery Cookbook: No Nuts. No Eggs. No Dairy. Just Delicious!

For those who are not aware, Divvies is a dedicated milk, egg, treenut and peanut-free company  started by Lori Sandler, mom to an allergy-ridden son.  Honestly, we have not tried any Divvies products because of my son's wheat allergy, but I have read about the company often in allergy circles, and was eager to learn more.

The Divvies Bakery Cookbook contains over 75 nut-, egg-, and dairy-free recipes.  I love that the book divides them into categories such as "Sweets That Make the Schoolhouse Rock" (with plenty of bakesale suggestions) and "It's Your Party!" (with great birthday ideas).  This is clearly written by an allergy mom!



I have tried one recipe so far -- just one, but I have tried it three times.  Not because it didn't work out well, but because it was so delicious that we kept needing more of it!  In the book, the recipe is called "Fruity Frozen Slushies."  The idea is to make a wonderful slushie mixture with fresh fruit (and few other ingredients), freeze them, and bring them along on picnics as a slushie, as it will melt a bit on the way.

We call it homemade berry gelato or sorbetto around here, though, and eat it right out of the freezer - sometimes even in cute little cups like in this photo.  We recently discovered a gourmet gelato shop nearby that serves a few dairy-free sorbetto flavors.  My son loves going there, and hasn't had any issues, but as with any shop, there is always a risk of cross contamination.  I cringe when I look at all of the pistachios and hazelnuts decoratively topping the nearby gelato flavors in the case.  This allows me to make him a treat that is truly just as good, far cheaper, and likely much healthier.  Not to mention getting to work on our stockpile of frozen raspberries from our garden.

I love the organization of the book, variety of recipes, clear instructions, and the beautiful photographs.

Peeves?  Just two minor things ...

Since we deal with a wheat allergy, many of the recipes are currently off limits to us, unless we modify them and do some experimentation (or, the Bibliophile outgrows his wheat allergy, which I hope will happen soon!).  That's not a peeve, of course, but it would have been great if the book somehow denoted which recipes were gluten free in the index, maybe with asterisks or just a separate list.  There are blank pages in the back, though, so we can just make our own list back there.

I was excited to try the fudge recipe below, which I received permission to share with readers.  However, one of the ingredients is a Silk brand soy creamer.  I know Silk also makes a hazelnut creamer, so I was worried about cross contamination issues with nuts in case they use the same equipment for all of their creamers (we do drink Silk brand soy milk all of the time, so if their milk is produced on the same equipment as the hazelnut creamer as well, then we clearly have assumed that risk already).  Just to be double safe, I tried contacting Silk, but wasn't able to get an answer through their website.  I will try calling them again this week.  Until then, I didn't want to chance a reaction, and tried the slushie recipe instead.

Here is the Fudge recipe from the book.  If you get the chance to try it before I do, I'd love to hear how you like it.

Win a Copy!

The publisher has generously offered to provide a copy of the Divvies Bakery Cookbook to one lucky reader.  To win:

1) Leave a comment on this post at Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile saying why you would like to win this book.  Make sure to leave your email address in your comment if it isn't in your profile, so I have a way to contact the winner.

2) Follow Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophileor Crazy Allergy Mama and leave a separate comment letting me know.

3) Facebook or twitter about this give-away and leave a separate comment letting me know.

That's three entries per person.  Prize may ship only to U.S. or Canadian addresses.  Deadline is one week from today - July 28, 2010 at midnight EST.  Good luck!


Disclosure: We were provided with a copy of the Divvies Bakery Cookbook in order to write this review.  If you click on any of the links above and purchase anything, we may receive a small commission through our affiliate relationship with Amazon.com.