Dairy Free at the National Ploughing Championships
I arrived at the Ploughing Championships for a half day quick tour around with the family two weeks ago. I had never been before and didn’t quite know what to expect. I expected lots of farm machinery and we certainly saw that and my two boys were in heaven!
What I definitely didn’t expect was to find so many dairy free producers and treasure in the form of cakes and muffins to bring home to taste and review. I spoke to the guy from Honest bakery based in Roscommon, the bakers behind the Has No Gluten range from ALDI, the Nobó ice-cream makers and the people from Hanna’s Secret Bakery.
Honest – wheat free indulgence
The Honest Bakery range is free from gluten, wheat and dairy. The owner Mark hails from Roscommon and currently his range is available in SuperValus in counties Roscommon, Galway and Clare. He gave us some cakes to try. There are both loaf sized cakes and individual portions. The individual ones we tried were Lemon & Poppy Cake and Blueberry Cake. They were both delicious. The lemon cake is to die for, you wouldn’t know it was gluten and dairy free. The blueberry cake is very crumbly, let’s just say don’t give to your child in the back of the car! We also tried the Chocolate Cake which is rich and delicious and the larger Lemon & Poppy cake. We also tried Ginger and Orange Cookies and Toasted Coconut Crunch.
Has No from ALDI
The Has No range were well represented in the bakers section of the huge ALDI tent at the Ploughing. The bakers were very friendly and happy to answer all my questions. The Has No range are all marked as free from gluten but many of their products are also dairy free namely – Wholegrain rolls, Delicious Soft White Bread, White Baps, Madeira Cake, Ginger Cookies, Jammy Rings and Digestives.
We got the baps, white bread and wholegrain roads to try out and they all went down a treat. The baps were huge, half of one is plenty for a small boy. The boys had sandwiches with the wholegrain rolls and the white bread also. I found lemon muffins this week in this range also which are dairy free and made one small boy very happy at cake time at a party on Thursday.
Hanna’s Secret Bakery
This is a gluten free range, some of which is also dairy free. We tried some of the dairy free muffins and they were quite good, maybe a little too crumbly for my liking but the boys loved them. The Lemon Muffin is especially good. The tutti fruitti muffin had way too many flavours going on but the boys really liked it. We also tried their brown bread loaf, which I found a bit dry.
Nobó
I have been waiting to try this ice cream for ages. It definitely is the closest to real ice-cream I’ve tasted. It is based on coconut milk and it is absolutely delicious. I tried the chocolate flavour. It was lovely to meet the nobó gang too. Here is my happy six year old with Brian and Rachel from Nobó and his chocolate ice-cream.
