Vegan Panettone

7th December 2019 0 By Allergendad

As I mentioned in my previous post (NOMO), every year there are new dairy-free Christmas options to try. In fact, I’d say that the number of new options each year is increasing. There certainly seems to be notable increase on the back of the vegan movement. Unfortunately vegan and milk-free don’t always go as hand-in-hand as you might expect. As you’ll know if you’ve followed the diagnosis series of blog posts on this site, the type of allergic reaction that me and my son has to milk means that we don’t need to be overly concerned about trace amounts of milk protein. As a result, I only really look for milk as a listed ingredient and will usually play down ‘may contains’ or cross-contamination risks. Obviously for someone with an acute (IgE) reaction to milk there is often never a small enough amount to guarantee safety. Effectively this is just a long disclaimer but it’s something to consider especially when buying products like the one I’m about to review as gifts for those with allergies.

So having started on a very sombre note (must work on my presentation skills!), Merry Christmas!

I’ve found a few things recently in Holland and Barrett that sound interesting. I’m particularly curious to try their own brand avacado or coconut based ice creams. I saw this panettone and thought that it would be a great thing to have around for Christmas to have as a treat that we can share in (along side all the chocolates and brandy butter topped butter pastry mince pies that we can’t). I bought a small one at first just to try it. I’ll be honest my take on vegan cakes and breads (particularly eggy ones like brioche or panettone) can be pretty poor so I wasn’t expecting to be very sold.

It’s always weird trying things for Christmas as you have to get in early (even early December isn’t really early enough for Christmas product placement) to make it relevant. But also means you end up trying things with out any context or occasion. As a result, Piglet and I tucked into our small-sized panettone at around 6pm on a Wednesday evening as his post-nursery meal snack and my pre-dinner ‘keep me going’. Just me and Piglet, unfortunately. It ticks too many of my wife’s PCOS diet no-gos to justify her trying it (wheat, sugar, rapeseed oil etc… You get the picture).

With my diet as it is at the moment, I eat relatively little sugar and actually have virtually no bread (which is such a shame as we have a wonderful bread maker and I’d become really quite good at making various delicious batch loaves). As such a sweet, textured, candied fruit bread treat scores pretty highly on the list of temptations. What started out as a small 1/8th of the loaf each turned into a trade off between eating all the deliciousness and walking up and down from the sofa to the kitchen to cut another small piece off over and over again.

While the attack was still relatively civilised…

It’s been a while since I’ve had proper brioche or panettone or anything like that so I’m probably not the best person to compare but what we had tasted so good I wouldn’t have known it was made without the obvious ingredients that have to be omitted to make it vegan. It was light, sweet and crumbly whilst still maintaining that stretched glutenous structure that I thought would be hard to get without egg to set it.

In short, as you can probably tell, I am a fan and I’ve since rushed out to get a big one to take to my family at Christmas. It’s win-win the way I see it. Either they like it and I’ve managed to contribute something to the festivities that we can all eat (I say all, not my wife or those with gluten intolerance); or I’m wrong and it’s not as comparable to real panettone as I think and they leave it to me and my son to demolish in a race to eat it over multiple days before it goes stale!

I need to think hard about what I want to achieve with my diet over Christmas… I’m certainly not obsessed with sticking to my diet rigidly and there are multiple treats that I’m looking forward to (this as one of them); but on the other hand I really have lost some of my sweet tooth by cutting out much of my sugar intake; and I’m so so happy with the results of how I feel and look (and just generally, seem) that it would be a shame to lose too much progress. That said, because I’ve actually relatively enjoyed the process I’m fairly sure I could continue the diet in the new-year in earnest with a good chance of keeping it going. I suspect, as with so much in life, it will just be a balance. Roast potatoes are zero calorie, right?!