Cookbooks Gluten Free Meet the Creator Recipes

Meet the Creator: Brittany Barton of Sparkle Kitchen

Brittany Barton is the creator and author of SparkleKitchen.com. On her website, she shares weekly recipes that are tasty, gluten-free, and dairy-free. She also writes tips to help follow a healthy lifestyle. Brittany believes a healthy body leads to a healthy mind and that food is the best preventive medicine. Sparkle Kitchen gives you the tools to become a more sparkly version of you!

Brittany has recently released a cookbook entitled The Sparkle Kitchen Cookbook which contains 72 gluten-free and dairy free recipes that are also free of refined sugar and soy! She hits all the points with these scrumptious recipes!

To learn more about her cookbook and journey to shining health and sustainable living, we’ve caught up with Brittany to get the inspire scoop on how to sparkle with health.

Interview with Brittany Barton, of Sparkle Kitchen

Anna Curran: We love your fun style. What’s the reason readers should turn to your cookbook? What’s different about your book than others they could buy?

Brittany Barton: The Sparkle Kitchen Cookbook has a focus on allergen friendly recipes that everyone can enjoy, even if you’re able to eat all foods. I wanted to show that you can eat amazingly delicious meals when eliminating gluten and dairy. I like to focus on what you can eat, not what you can’t. The book is filled with flavorful combinations, from the Fall Spice Pumpkin Chili to the Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Stone Fruit Salsa.

Each recipe is fun, colorful and easy to make. I include a glossary of lesser known ingredients, which are all available at most grocery stores or online.

Anna Curran: Tell us about the inspiration behind your recently released cookbook, The Sparkle Kitchen Cookbook.

Brittany Barton: The cookbook is a result of almost two years of recipe development work. I began SparkleKitchen.com in 2014 and I wanted a way to capture everything I’d created in one space. All of the recipes are allergen friendly and adhere to a dairy-free, gluten-free diet.

The inspiration for SparkleKitchen.com is my own health challenges. I had to eliminate foods that were staples in my diet, like wheat and grains and I needed a way to make it fun rather than a burden. So I began adapting recipes, searching for alternatives, testing, researching and more testing and capturing the process along the way.

Anna Curran: We’re very excited to see so many healthy eating perspectives out there, especially sustainable living. What’s behind your your choice to focus on gluten-free, dairy-free and sustainable recipes?

Brittany Barton: I began Sparkle Kitchen to help myself. With multiple food allergies and sensitivities, countless misdiagnosed illnesses including speculative Crohn’s disease for 2 years, a confirmed case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, spontaneous trips to the ER, eating disorders and food restriction, I was on a life mission to find a solution and finally feel good.

My first step was an elimination diet, omitting foods that were possibly causing bodily distress. These included gluten, dairy, nuts, seeds, soy, grains, eggs and nightshades. It was no picnic. But I stuck to it and began feeling better. That’s why I created the cookbook. So that others with similar diet requirements would have a collection of recipes at their fingertips.

Sustainable recipes has two sides. One is choosing foods that make you feel vibrant and support a healthy body. Two is the environmental side. Food production carries a large footprint and it’s important that we honor its sources so that we can maintain good growing and raising conditions.

I like to follow the guiding principle that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind and food is the best preventive medicine. The Sparkle Kitchen Cookbook gives you the resources to cook to good health.

Anna Curran: What are some of your favorite ingredients to use as replacements to make a recipe dairy-free? Same question, but for gluten-free. What are essential stand ins?

Brittany Barton: Canned coconut milk! I’m obsessed with the stuff. The full-fat kind is in most of my diary-free recipes and I always recommended Native Forest’s brand. A close second is nutritional yeast. It is the secret to the cheesy flavor in my Roasted Cauliflower Gratin. Anyone with a dairy allergen or intolerance should keep those two ingredients stocked in their pantry.

For gluten free options, I like using kelp noodles as a rice noodle alternative and in salads to give them some crunch. Sweet potatoes are a magical ingredient too. They can make delicious pancakes, muffins and breads with little else added. Traditional baked goods are tricky since I’m not a big fan of most gluten free flours. Coconut flour combined with tapioca starch are the two I use in my Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread. It is so incredibly moist and has the perfect consistency of a traditional sweet bread.

Anna Curran: What are some lessons you have learned on your journey to find a healthy and nutritious lifestyle?

Brittany Barton: The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that our bodies are constantly changing, for women especially. Our hormones determine our diet and take it down a twisted, winding path each month and it’s our job to get good at listening to it. I fought it for too long and would beat myself up over eating something that wasn’t on my current self prescribed plan. We all get cravings and I’ve learned to honor them, not shame them. If my body wants pancakes for breakfast, then I’m going to enjoy each bite.