Chocolate Icing
Dr. Oetker you make good Icing!
While the Dr. Oetker brand chocolate icing mix is not technically "gluten free", it contains icing sugar that has organic cornstarch (rather than wheat starch) to keep the sugar from being sticky. Most icing sugar contains wheat starch in such a small quantity that it may not even be listed on the package! However, if you're dealing with a very severe gluten allergy, you can't assume that icing sugar is "safe". Most gluten allergy or celiac disease resources will list icing sugar as a food to avoid.
So, even though the package doesn't claim the product is "gluten free", I decided to try out Dr. Oetker's icing mix and see if it would work for my son Michael's birthday cake. My son's gluten allergy is not severe, and since the package specified cornstarch rather then wheat starch, I figured I had what qualified as an allergy product on my hands.
We can't use dairy in our home because of a dairy allergy, so using butter in the icing mix was a no-no. Instead, I substituted organic expeller-pressed coconut oil. If you don't know about this substitution for butter, you should! It's a saturated fat that's solid at room temperature (like butter). Frankly, in my experience it works exactly like butter for any kind of cooking. I even use it for pan-frying food. There's no coconut flavour in this kind of oil, so it won't change the taste of your food, but it does give the desired "buttery" result.
So, other then substituting the softened butter with softened expeller-pressed coconut oil, I made the Dr. Oetker icing mix according to its directions. It worked beautifully! The coconut oil made the icing creamy, and the consistency was ideal for icing a cake.
The chocolate cake, a Gluten Free Cake Mix by Glutino, and the Dr. Oetker chocolate icing passed the taste test at a birthday party with 5 little boys, 4 of whom had no allergies of any kind. It even passed the taste test with the parents who attended the party. So, if you're looking for an allergy-friendly icing mix to top off your cake, keep an eye out for the Dr. Oetker brand.
