If you thought you'd been noticing a few more posts mentioning gluten free food on this blog recently, you're not wrong. If you're a vegan, you might have raised an eyebrow - I think a lot of vegans have gone to restaurants and told the server they're vegan, only be offered gluten free food because someone thinks vegan and gluten-free food are the same thing, or because they think people who eat vegan food are hardcore health nuts and gluten-free food is healthy too. So why the gluten-free posts?
I've recently found out that I have coeliac disease - that means no gluten, ever. When I was diagnosed, a couple of (non-vegan) friends said they expected me to, or thought I should, stop being vegan. That was never something that crossed my mind.
If anything, I think being a vegan makes being coeliac easier - there's a lot of skills that I learned being a vegan that I can deploy for being coeliac too. I'm really good at reading labels and I can spot ingredients I won't eat in milliseconds. I'm used to finding the best restaurants that will serve food that suits my dietary requirements when I go somewhere new. And I'm pretty good at having awkward conversations about what I do and don't eat with servers at restaurants, and not feeling embarrassed about it.
When I was diagnosed, my first thoughts were around 'where can I get vegan and gluten-free cake?' For all the reasons mentioned above, I've eaten a good few gluten free desserts, and they've not always been amazing. Luckily, I've found some great places that do not just great vegan cake, or great vegan and gluten-free cake, but just great cake all round. Here are some of my recommendations.
Monty and Vito's Diner
Monty and Vito's Diner is a bricks-and-mortar American diner in Barry, Wales where everything is gluten free and vegan. If you're not near Barry (like me) there's postal delivery too. I've ordered from Monty and Vito's a few times, and I've been blown away by just how good everything I ordered was.
Once I heard that I couldn't eat gluten again, my mind went straight to all the glorious baked goods I would never have again, from the everyday to the rare treat. When I found Monty and Vito's, I pretty much breathed a sigh of relief, because they seemed to have everything I dreamt was beyond my reach. Case in point: croissants
Monty and Vito's does plain and - be still my patisserie-loving heart - almond croissants. Both are great - crispy, flaky, slightly sweet. Monty and Vito's does gluten-free crumpets too, which are, in my humble opinion, pretty indistinguishable from the gluten-containing versions and heavenly to eat.
Monty and Vito's also does themed boxes - Christmas, Easter, that sort of thing - where you get a selection of delicious baked items in one go. These were a few of the delights in the Mother's Day box - fondant fancies, mini Battenbergs, shortbread, white chocolate truffles and Viennese whirls. All of them were incredibly good.
In summary, I love everything about Monty and Vito's and couldn't recommend them more. If you're vegan and gluten-free, or even if you're not, you need to hit these guys up.
Orders over Instagram and Facebook DM.
Veg Oot
Once a month, you have a chance to order a postal treat box from Scottish gluten-free vegan bakery. You should definitely do that, because those treat boxes sell out and if you need a gluten-free and vegan box of goodness, this is a great shout.
Here's the sight that greeted me when I opened up the recent Easter treat box:
If only I was a better photographer, you'd be able to see how glorious those macarons were - there were tiny, almost too cute to eat, bunny and chick macarons in the box. Almost too cute to eat, but too tasty to not eat, of course.
Alongside the flawless macarons were a bunch of other baked treats - a millionaire's slice (beautifully gooey caramel), a wagon wheel type biscuit that was way better than the original version I remember from childhood, a slab of chocolate and mini-egg fudge that I kept trying to put down and couldn't, a beautiful shortbread heart with a creamy filling, Battenberg slice (how I love thee, let me count the ways!) and the iconically named 'Cream egg rocky road crispie thingy' (Veg Oot's name, not mine!)
Boxes and other baked goods are available via the Veg Oot site and you can get news of website restocks and in person appearances, on Veg Oot's instagram.
Positive Bakes
Positive Bakes is another all-vegan, all-gluten-free bakery that caught my eye for selling afternoon teas by post. Who doesn't want to get home from work and eat their way through an eye-watering amount of cakes, brownies and scones?
I ordered an afternoon tea for two (yes, I did share. Well, some of it) and couldn't eat everything at once, so I froze a few things, and I'm happy to report they were just as good defrosted as fresh.
I particularly enjoyed the Bakewell cake, because I'm a sucker for all things Bakewell, and thought the brownies were top-notch, even though I'm very much not a sucker for brownies.
I really did enjoy the scones - check out the chunkyness of this lad below, with all the appropriate jam and cream (no, I don't know which way they should go on either).
The jam pot that came with the afternoon tea box was one of those tiny pots that you get at hotel breakfasts, but the vegan clotted cream was great and there was more than enough for the scones.
My only regret with the Positive Bakes afternoon tea was that I didn't make a bunch of cucumber sandwiches and bust out a three-tiered cake stand to do justice to the afternoon tea glory.
Boxes and other goodies are available to order on their website. You can also often get deals on Positive Bakes boxes via Red Letter Days and Yumbles.
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