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Enjoy Life's Cookies for Everyone!: 150 Delicious Gluten-Free Treats that are Safe for Most Anyone with Food Allergies, Intolerances, and Sensitivities
Enjoy Life's™ Cookies for Everyone! offers allergy-free cookies, brownies and bars that are safe and delicious. With treats such as Caramel-icious Apple Cookies, Bodacious Blondie Swirl Bars, Peppermint Pizzazz Brownies, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bark, each of the 150 recipes are free of gluten as well as the eight most common allergens, thus taking the guesswork out of determining which recipes are safe—and which are a risk. Culinary expert Leslie Hammond teaches readers how to use naturally allergy-free ingredients and substitutes to add richness, texture, pizzazz and nutritional content to cookies and bars without losing the “yummy” factor. Each recipe is vetted for taste and safety by the Enjoy Life® company, a leader in delicious and healthful allergy-free foods.
- GenresCookbooks
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 30, 2017
All of these recipes are free of the top 8 U.S. allergens, plus two more from Canada's 11 (sesame + sulfites), and the authors are really aware that people can be allergic (or at least intolerant) to anything, and are quick to offer substitutions even for things that aren't recognized as top allergens.
Recipes use ingredients like Spectrum organic palm oil shortening, vegetable oil, superfine sugar (which you can make on your own in the food processor/blender, but this book leaves out that information), brown sugar, molasses, rice bran, oats, fruit juice, and non-dairy milk. Eggs are replaced with flax seed and fruit purees, not chemical egg replacers. It doesn't let you use eggs if you can, and even says you shouldn't try to add them in because it might throw off the recipe's chemistry, which is fair. There are no custom flour mixes required.
There is an optional custom mix if you'd like your baked goods to have more nutrients than the white rice and tapioca flour used in most of the recipes. The Mock Whole Wheat Flour blend is made of tapioca flour, cornstarch or rice bran, fava flour or flaxmeal, sorghum flour, and xanthan gum (optional). This can be used to replace the flour in most recipes. There are a few that say you shouldn't modify them—those are mostly the shortbread recipes, so there are only about three where you can't use it.
It has a nice introduction to pantry supplies, and cooking terms and tools, in case you're new to baking. There's general storage advice there, too, so it's missing from the individual recipes.
Measurements are in U.S. volume and metric. There's a picture for every recipe, but only a few have headnotes, which would have been useful to determine the difference between these two pumpkin bars, or the thirty (sic) brownie variations offered. Don't get me wrong, you can never have enough brownie recipes, but I need to know what makes this brownie recipe different from the last five, and while there is a color photo for each cookie, there is only one photo, of a single example of that cookie, so it's not always easy to tell what kind of texture it has.
That's drop and bar cookies, but it loses the plot a bit in the penultimate chapter where it supposedly covers "no-bake cookies, tartlets, and other bite-sized goodies." This somehow includes pancakes. Don't patronize me. The final chapter is the shortest and does low-sugar cookies with more nutritious flours.
The book hits all my requirements, but I'm suspicious of a few things it says, like it insists tapioca flour is different from tapioca starch, which might be true but literally no one else on the planet seems to care about the difference. Supposedly, according to this book, you can find real tapioca starch at the Asian grocery store. The problem is the majority of stuff in Asian grocery stores doesn't have any English on it, and I don't have a lot of confidence you can call up the manufacturer and have a satisfying conversation about whether or not the item was produced in a facility free of peanuts or soy or fish or whatever. So, weird advice to give a reader who is probably allergic, or at least intolerant, to at least two major things.
Secondly, it says you can replace a 1/4 cup of butter with 1/4 cup vegetable shortening, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 cup water, and 1/4 tsp salt. My math's not great, but that substitution ends up being way more than a 1/4 cup. Why? I'm certainly not doubling the fat when I replace butter. A cup of butter actually has less fat than than cup of shortening or oil because butter also has water and dairy solids in it, whereas fat is pure fat. I feel like that recipe is to replace a cup of butter. But I'll never know.
So I'm suspicious. Either they're lying to me or no one edited this thing, which doesn't bode well for the recipes, but if you absolutely need to avoid at least two major allergens, this book has you covered. It's the first cookbook I've read that doesn't pretend "non-dairy buttery spread" is free of troublesome ingredients, so I'm grateful for that as I can't eat a single one of those. On the other hand, it straight up says that rice flour makes things gritty, which isn't a good sign, but if that's the case, I might experiment with letting the doughs rest in the fridge for an hour and see what happens.
Recipes use ingredients like Spectrum organic palm oil shortening, vegetable oil, superfine sugar (which you can make on your own in the food processor/blender, but this book leaves out that information), brown sugar, molasses, rice bran, oats, fruit juice, and non-dairy milk. Eggs are replaced with flax seed and fruit purees, not chemical egg replacers. It doesn't let you use eggs if you can, and even says you shouldn't try to add them in because it might throw off the recipe's chemistry, which is fair. There are no custom flour mixes required.
There is an optional custom mix if you'd like your baked goods to have more nutrients than the white rice and tapioca flour used in most of the recipes. The Mock Whole Wheat Flour blend is made of tapioca flour, cornstarch or rice bran, fava flour or flaxmeal, sorghum flour, and xanthan gum (optional). This can be used to replace the flour in most recipes. There are a few that say you shouldn't modify them—those are mostly the shortbread recipes, so there are only about three where you can't use it.
It has a nice introduction to pantry supplies, and cooking terms and tools, in case you're new to baking. There's general storage advice there, too, so it's missing from the individual recipes.
Measurements are in U.S. volume and metric. There's a picture for every recipe, but only a few have headnotes, which would have been useful to determine the difference between these two pumpkin bars, or the thirty (sic) brownie variations offered. Don't get me wrong, you can never have enough brownie recipes, but I need to know what makes this brownie recipe different from the last five, and while there is a color photo for each cookie, there is only one photo, of a single example of that cookie, so it's not always easy to tell what kind of texture it has.
That's drop and bar cookies, but it loses the plot a bit in the penultimate chapter where it supposedly covers "no-bake cookies, tartlets, and other bite-sized goodies." This somehow includes pancakes. Don't patronize me. The final chapter is the shortest and does low-sugar cookies with more nutritious flours.
The book hits all my requirements, but I'm suspicious of a few things it says, like it insists tapioca flour is different from tapioca starch, which might be true but literally no one else on the planet seems to care about the difference. Supposedly, according to this book, you can find real tapioca starch at the Asian grocery store. The problem is the majority of stuff in Asian grocery stores doesn't have any English on it, and I don't have a lot of confidence you can call up the manufacturer and have a satisfying conversation about whether or not the item was produced in a facility free of peanuts or soy or fish or whatever. So, weird advice to give a reader who is probably allergic, or at least intolerant, to at least two major things.
Secondly, it says you can replace a 1/4 cup of butter with 1/4 cup vegetable shortening, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 cup water, and 1/4 tsp salt. My math's not great, but that substitution ends up being way more than a 1/4 cup. Why? I'm certainly not doubling the fat when I replace butter. A cup of butter actually has less fat than than cup of shortening or oil because butter also has water and dairy solids in it, whereas fat is pure fat. I feel like that recipe is to replace a cup of butter. But I'll never know.
So I'm suspicious. Either they're lying to me or no one edited this thing, which doesn't bode well for the recipes, but if you absolutely need to avoid at least two major allergens, this book has you covered. It's the first cookbook I've read that doesn't pretend "non-dairy buttery spread" is free of troublesome ingredients, so I'm grateful for that as I can't eat a single one of those. On the other hand, it straight up says that rice flour makes things gritty, which isn't a good sign, but if that's the case, I might experiment with letting the doughs rest in the fridge for an hour and see what happens.
April 9, 2026
Good for Those with Food Allergies
This book has many cookie or treat recipes without the most common food allergy ingredients. There are photographs of each recipe. Some are variations of recipes that are familiar to most people, but some were nothing I had thought of before - like wild rice in cookies.
I appreciate that the author avoided the main food allergens, because there are several food allergies in my family and in my best friend’s family. She uses rice flour and rice milk in many recipes to avoid dairy and gluten, but I have a mild issue with rice, too, so I will need to see how my preferred substitutes work in the recipes.
This book has many cookie or treat recipes without the most common food allergy ingredients. There are photographs of each recipe. Some are variations of recipes that are familiar to most people, but some were nothing I had thought of before - like wild rice in cookies.
I appreciate that the author avoided the main food allergens, because there are several food allergies in my family and in my best friend’s family. She uses rice flour and rice milk in many recipes to avoid dairy and gluten, but I have a mild issue with rice, too, so I will need to see how my preferred substitutes work in the recipes.
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