Alergies.....

[2sdae]

How do you handle making a cake for someone who has a food allergy?
I have someone who wants a cake but who has a son with severe peanut allergies.
I am a bit nervous about making it. I dont keep peanuts or most nuts in my home but we do have peanut butter.
I guess I could clorox everything and remove the peanut butter from my cabinets before hand to ensure there are remnants.
Anybody have a food allergy they have to deal with and prepare their food around?
Any tips would be helpful.

[2sdae]

No one out there has has allergy issues???
Seems that's a common occurrence here!
Must be the ohio valley!

[nefgaby]

Might be a little too late... I just found this thread!

Anyway, I have a dear friend whose son has severe peanut allergies as well. What I did was make a cake from scratch (since cake mixes have a disclaimer on the box, didn't want to risk it) and since I have peanut products in my home, I ran the dishwasher in the sanitize cycle with all my cake utensils before I started. Made sure all my ingredients had not been in contact with anything peanut. Used mostly new packages of everything (I didn't have most of the ingredients at home anyway) Read ALL the labels, made a couple 1 800 calls to companies that didn't have any info on the box. I even used a new gallon of milk for the batter (since I had carrot cake with pecans in the refrigerator). And well... did the best I could to avoid any contamination... and at the party, I made sure my friend had the epi pen handy (just in case). Everything went fine, this boy loved the cake, had seconds and even took some home.

Hope that helps...

[2sdae]

I was planning on doing basically what you said, but it turns out this woman wanted a cake for darn near free, and with allergy issues and all!
So her and her cake can and did basically go on!

[nefgaby]

Ohhh... good you are not under selling yourself!

[cakebaker]

How do I handle it?

I don't! I just won't do cakes for anyone who tells me up front that there are severe allergy issues. I don't want the liability issues that come with it.

Good for you for not caving on the price, especially when you were having to deal with a peanut allergy...those can be really hard to handle.

[elizw]

i have a couple of customers that have kids with peanut allergies. i tell them that i do not have any recipes that use peanuts or peanut butter. i do have recipes that call for pecans. i let them know that i have peanut butter in my pantry for my kids. however, all of my baking stuff goes through the dishwasher on super hot water everytime it is used. they seem to be fine with this.

[2sdae]

depends on the allergy and sensitivity ti it also. But if scour your cake stuff and kitchen before and after use <to prevent contamination while baking> you should be fine...but I understand the hesitancy to not take the chance. It is someone's life we are talking about, that put it in perspective for me real quick.