Shredded cheese is essential on top of chili, to make a quesadilla, to add to your tacos and to make nachos. A lot of dairy-free cheese tastes chalky, but Daiya shredded “cheese” melts just like regular cheese, has a similar consistency, is creamy, and even stretches like regular cheese. If you make a giant platter of nachos with it, your friends won’t know the difference.
Some dairy-free cream cheeses take on a pudding-like consistency and flop around, not sticking to your toast or bagel. This is one of the most spreadable dairy-free cream cheeses on the market, and has an authentic flavor.
Before you have a meltdown thinking chocolate ice cream is out of the question on a dairy-free diet, rest assured you can find it, and from one of the best names in the ice cream business. This sorbet is dense, rich and creamy and hardly tastes like a sorbet at all.
If you love vanilla sauce on your chocolate cake, brownies, pancakes and oatmeal cookies, you don’t have to go without. Believe it or not, marshmallow crème from Kraft is dairy-free, as are the actual marshmallows. For a fresh off the pan sauce experience, just melt the marshmallows with margarine in a pan.
What goes great with marshmallows? Chocolate! Amazon features several dairy-free dark chocolate brands including Dark Chocolate Dream, NuGo chocolate bars and Amberlyn Belgian dark chocolate.
When you go dairy-free, there will be times you need your caffeine pick-me-up while you’re grocery shopping—you’re not at a coffee shop where they can specialize it for you with soy or almond milk—and it seems like all you can find is the Starbucks bottled Iced Coffee, with milk. But look again: this product is dairy-free!
A lot of energy bars have milk chocolate coating, or dairy binders. But even a dairy-free eater can get some handheld energy on the go. AllerEnergy Nutrition bars are dairy free, as are the Gingerbread, Spiced Pumpkin Pie and Peppermint Stick Clif bars. From Larabar, Ginger, Snap & Cashew, Cookie flavors, Cherry Pie, Cocoa Mole, Pecan Pie and Cherry are dairy free.
Even dairy-free diners need a quick meal sometimes. Amy’s is incredible for dairy-free, frozen-food favorites. Try Amy’s tamale with roasted vegetables, or spinach rice crust pizza, or baked ziti bowl. Ians also has some great dairy-free and gluten-free options, like the soy cheesy French bread pizza and the chicken finger meal.
If cookie-baking parties are your thing or you don’t want to track down a pricy dairy-free cake for a birthday, most ready-made frosting brands are in fact dairy free, like Duncan Hines creamy home-style chocolate butter cream and Betty Crocker’s whipped butter cream.
If you love to bake, you might become frustrated when you start seeing a lot of hidden dairy ingredients in most baking mixes. But, Authentic Foods makes delicious mixes for blueberry muffins, pancakes, piecrust and even a gluten-free flour. Bob’s Red Mill is another great brand for gluten and dairy free mixes, and it’s an extensive line with brownie mix, cornbread mix, whole grain cake mix, waffle mix and more.
