These recipes are practically the Holy Grail of acceptable school snacks—suitable for the "allergy classrooms" at your child's school: no meat, no wheat, no dairy, no berries, no nuts. If only you'd found them sooner!
Even when my daughter Michaela was in preschool, I was flummoxed by what kind of treat I could bring in for her third birthday—one of the kids in her class had a severe nut allergy. Children could not bring any kind of peanut butter or nut products in their lunch. So I very carefully made a cake that contained nothing that had been processed in a facility that also processed nuts, but I wasn't sure about frosting. I didn't have time to make my own, or so I thought.

But the time I spent reading every single label in the frosting section at the supermarket might have been better spent concocting my own icing. I ended up buying an extra can of frosting and bringing it into the classroom for the
teacher and the child's mom to check so we could be doubly sure it was safe (it was).

If I had to do all that over again, I'd make the butter cookies, or maybe the coconut corn muffins and stick a candle in them.

Now, though, I get to make them for me. After much resistance, I've given up gluten. Sure, I've gone down a pants size, but I miss cookies and cake. A lot. Fruit salad only goes so far in satisfying my craving for sweets—that is to say, not far at all.

Safe snacks that work for the classroom 
Published 07/28/2010

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