This fall I received the Tomte Cake set, and immediately baked delicious pumpkin cake houses for autumn that my children loved both decorating and eating. With a young son recently diagnosed with the tick-born allergy Alpha Gal Syndrome (AGS), I am determined to find flexible holiday recipes that can be modified to suit his dietary needs. This Tomte Gingerbread House recipe for the Christmas season is Alpha Gal friendly, and can be tailored to your family’s ingredient checklist for food allergies or personal preference. I’m including the ingredient swaps that work for my son, as well as the candy decorations that he has tolerated well with this disease.
This pretty cake set includes a decorative box for storage, aluminum cake pan, Tomte gnome figure and the story book of Tomte. [MSRP $64.00 plus shipping.] We enjoy reading this clever story about a naughty gnome named Tomte who falls into the cake batter and comes out with a reputation for good luck. So, there is delight in hiding and finding our Tomte when we bake the cakes. In fact, my son was the lucky finder of Tomte in these Gingerbread cakes.
I followed the recipe and instructions from Tomte’s book, with the following substitutions for AGS-safe ingredients:
I greased and filled each cake well with the batter (per the instructions) and baked for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees. After 10 minutes I ran a knife around each house and flipped the cakes onto a baking rack to cool.
I made two batches of the cake batter, and each on formed a “bubble” on the bottoms of my cakes. Using a sharp bread knife I cut off these protrusions, and used them to make a wobbly, Charlie Brown-esque Christmas Tree in my gingerbread house village.
Next, we set about decorating these little cakes. The following decorations are supposed to be AGS safe, and (most importantly), don’t cause my son to react.
We had a lot of fun decorating the cakes and eating the decorations. The cakes themselves smelled and tasted heavenly, and making them is definitely a tradition we will follow every year. And, there was a lot of joy in having a fun dessert option that my son could eat every part of without worry.
Jackie Baird Richardson is an interior designer, editor at The WON and avid junker. Watch for her design tips and occasional crafting ideas, bringing the outdoors indoors. View all posts by Jackie Richardson
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