Alisa Fleming ~ Earlier this year I met the amazing Carol Kicinski of Simply… Gluten-Free. She seems so professional and reserved on her gorgeous blog, but in person, she is super friendly, fun, and outgoing. This image carries over beautifully to her new cookbook, Simply … Gluten-free Desserts. It has a stunning, flawless design and is printed as a timeless hardback. But inside, once I got into it, I discovered recipes that were indulgent, inviting, and not the least bit pretentious.

Simply … Gluten-free Desserts is a treasure trove of gluten-free sweets. I nearly fell into a sugar coma just looking through it. This cookbook isn’t dairy-free by any means, but Carol has some really fun dairy-free recipes within (Dairy-free Cream Puffs? Yes please!). Plus, with the dairy substitutions that I outline in my book, almost every recipe is within limits. To note, like many gluten-free cookbooks, Simply … Gluten-free uses a lot of eggs, which might not be as easy to substitute in many of the recipes. Eggs work as an ideal binder when gluten is absent.

With so many cake, cupcake, frosting, cookie, bar, candy, pie, tart, pudding, custard, frozen dessert, and breakfast treat recipes to choose from … I went for an old favorite first, chocolate. In my favorite format of course, cookies. I didn’t have the ingredients on hand for Carol’s Sweet Rice Flour Blend, so I chose a recipe that was almost grain-free and that I could easily adapt to dairy-free.

This is my version, instructions and all, of Carol’s … Click Here for the Chocolate Cherry Fudge Drops Recipe.

This is a third party review by Alisa Fleming, founder of GoDairyFree.org and author of Go Dairy Free: The Guide and Cookbook for Milk Allergies, Lactose Intolerance, and Casein-Free Living. Alisa is also a freelance writer for several publications, with an emphasis on creating recipes for various types of special diets.