Meditations Of The Dessert Chef Dating Milk Allergies
I am a dessert addict. This, frankly, will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me even slightly. I have somehow become the kind of person who gets phone calls from her friends saying “We’re at 23rd and Lexington and need dessert — what’s near here?” I have two favorite places for madeleines, a favorite for almond croissants, and do not even get me started on chocolates. Like any serious dessert person, I make them at home a LOT. Why? Dude, I can’t be running out to Balthazar every time I have a dessert emergency. I have things to do. And no one in New York seems to make an adequate pecan pie.
My dessert addiction isn’t the problem. I am at peace with my massive sweets consumption and the fact that I’m likely to crystallize into a giant sugar cube by the time I hit age 70. Here’s the problem. The new guy? He’s allergic to milk proteins.
As it happens, I have a painfully large array of dietary items to avoid myself, including cheese and sour cream, which is practically tragic. In some ways his allergy actually works quite nicely with my dietary restrictions. He doesn’t think I’m freakishly high maintenance for having to avoid certain dishes, and we are united in looking longingly through the window at New York’s ubiquitous “slices” and then going and eating something more diet-friendly than pizza.
My tragedy? All the lovely milk and cream-heavy desserts that I can’t make for him. Flan. Lemon pudding. Trifle. Blackberry shortcake. (Get real — who wants that without whipped cream?) How can he LIVE without these things? And more to the point, how can I live without making all my best stuff to show him how good it is? I am myself someone who ends nearly every meal with dessert, including breakfast, so it’s not like desserts or baked goods are ever in short supply in my apartment. When I’m dating someone, my instinct is to share all the great desserts I’ve found and can make, and if he happens to have a sweet tooth (he does), it is ALL OVER. The Ex didn’t especially like sweets, one more way in which he was no fun whatsoever. When I made desserts for him, as I sometimes did, it was largely for myself, and sometimes for the express purpose of being obnoxious. (See e.g. the year when I made him about 12 dozen cookies with pink and red and white M&Ms on Valentine’s Day. The Ex? Not a guy for pink and white or Valentine’s Day.) This one, though? He likes dessert. And I apparently need to supply it to him.
It’s sort of ridiculous, really. I’m not exactly the most old-fashioned girl on the planet, so this massive need to ply him with baked goods seems a little incongruous. I’m not really an “I’ve gotta feed my man!” kind of person. I am in no danger of becoming a homemaker or permitting anyone who refers to me as “the little woman” to retain his head. (Lily has a sword I’m pretty sure she’d let me borrow.) Apparently, however, I am in fact an “I’ve gotta drown my man in sugar” kind of person. The volume of dessert and putatively non-dessert baked goods that has gone through this apartment in the last month is terrifying to contemplate. Thankfully, he has two male roommates in their 20s, so I have not had to consume anything like half of it myself.
He has been very good humored about the whole sugar thing, and has even been low key about his milk allergies. I poured a mocha down his throat at 9th Street Espresso on his birthday before I knew that he was allergic. He, of course, did not say anything. Apparently his reaction was “Well, I probably won’t die.“ Aside from the fact that this sheds some interesting light on the subject of things guys will do for women they’re trying to impress, it creates some problems for me. If I make something really delicious and dairy-containing, he will probably eat it. At least some of it. This is the slippery slope right here, people. I know from experience I can feed him a cake that was made with some milk. Can I feed him one with a whipped cream frosting? If I get an epi-pen from my doctor to hold in case of emergency, is it then okay for me to make my great-grandmother’s chocolate pudding recipe? There are SO many good desserts involving a whole bunch of milk or cream that, well, it seems like a shame for him to miss out on all of them for a petty thing like anaphylactic shock. Hey, Taco’s experienced anaphylaxis and he never got anything like homemade peach ice cream out of it.
Pity me, chefs everywhere. Yeah, I could learn to make a lot of these things with substitutes, but the fact is that most of the substitutes are things I can’t eat. Experimental desserts that I can’t sample for quality control? Seems sketchy. I’m thinking there must be some happy medium. You know, where I get to be satisfied that he is not missing out on the best desserts in existence, and he maybe starts to itch a little but doesn’t have his throat close up. Seems fair, right?
Man, i gotta get off this diet. You’re inspiring me to start baking again!
hey chickpea, I am also dairy intolerant and two suggestions. One, find out if he can tolerate the pills that some people can take before consuming dairy products that counter the reaction. I can’t remember the name of them for the life of me but they’re OTC and work for a lot of people who are intolerant versus a full-blown allergy. my boy-child could use them when he needed to although he hated them, they did the job. The other option is to start looking into rice milk products (be careful with soy) when baking. Rice milk will replace dairy easily in a recipe but it’s thinner - no funny taste or after taste though. Coconut milk is much thicker but does have a distinct taste and will influence the end result.
I think it’s french bread (when made properly) that doesn’t have any dairy in it by the way.
Thanks, I’ll have to try the rice milk thing! He isn’t actually lactose-intolerant, just allergic to the proteins, so I gather goat milk is okay too? I’m having trouble imagining a goat milk custard as being very good, though.