Christmas is often a time of overindulgence. You get out the family recipes and make foods that you don't generally eat the rest of the year: eggnog, spritz wafers, Buche de Noel or Yule Log and fruit cake. If you are lactose intolerant or have an outright milk allergy, however, everything on that list but the fruit cake is off the menu. There are methods to help you enjoy Christmas without dairy products.
Substitute
Rice, almond or soy milk can stand in for cow's milk in many recipes. These milks may have sweetening added, especially rice milk, so adjust the sugar in your recipe as necessary. Shortening can take the place of butter in cookies. You may need to experiment with the original recipe, as the texture may be different with these substitutes. Butter is about 20% water and can make cookies less crumbly. Butter also melts at a lower temperature; the faster the melting, the quicker the cookie will spread. If you use shortening you may want to press down on each cookie slightly for a thin, crisp cookie. If you miss the buttery taste, you can add artificial butter flavor to the shortening. Fill a Buche de Noel with non-dairy whipped topping instead of whipped cream.
Choose Other Traditional Foods
You tried the eggnog recipe without cow's milk, but it just doesn't taste right. Consider a completely different beverage that is still traditional. Hot mulled cider is a classic Christmas drink in many parts of the world and very easy to make. You can keep it warm in a slow cooker, which makes it a good choice for a buffet dinner. Wassail, a fruit punch with cinnamon added, is another popular choice. Wassail can be made with cranberry juice to give it a beautiful color as well as sprightly taste. Either of these drinks may be made with or without alcohol. Serve a Christmas pudding instead of the Buche de Noel. Also called plum pudding, even though it may not contain plums, this traditional English dish can be steamed well ahead of serving time and then reheated - a boon to the busy holiday cook. There are hundreds of cookie recipes that don't use milk or butter. Try gingerbread or lebkuchen, a spicy German Christmas cookie. Springele, another traditional holiday cookie, is made with elaborate molds and painted with food coloring and edible paints.
Create New Traditions
Christmas is celebrated with a wide variety of foods in different places in the world. Perhaps there are ethic traditions several generations back that you have never explored. Your great-grandmother came from Mexico - think about tamales and enchiladas with soy cheese as a Christmas Eve dinner, followed by chocolate shortbread cookies for dessert. In the Czech Republic, a fish chowder and fried fish are traditional Christmas Eve fare, with a special potato salad and a variety of Christmas cookies for dessert. The Danes enjoy mulled red wine, roasted pork or duck, rice pudding (use a dairy free alternative), caramelized potatoes and marzipan or chocolate-covered nuts as sweets.
There are many delicious possibilities for a dairy free Christmas; you might even start a new family tradition!
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