Return of Carl, Gluten Free Eclairs and Feel Free in Administration

Carl the Free From Caterpillar cake disappeared off our shelves for a while, but he his back in Tesco! We also have news on gluten and dairy free rule of crumb chocolate eclairs and the company, Feel Free, who were popular for their donuts go into Administration.

There has been some excited products appearing (or reappearing) this last week or so that we just had to share the details with you!

If you have been into Tesco recently you may have noticed Carl the Caterpillar Gluten Free Cake has made a comeback, what you may not have noticed is that he is now also dairy free as well as gluten free!

Last time Carl the Caterpillar was in he was a huge hit with kids and adults, he really was a lovely cake and was great for a treat or for a birthday party. There was a lot of disappointment when he vanished a while ago but a few weeks ago he started drifting back into stores with a slightly altered recipe which is also dairy free.

The main criticism people had last time with Carl was that he contained dairy, which was a blow to those Coeliacs who can't tolerate dairy, but now with the new change he is open to a few more people, hopefully this time he stays in stores for good!

The second product that has appeared in the last couple of weeks is Rule of Crumb Chocolate Eclairs in Sainsburys. I know I, along with others, have been hoping for the day Chocolate Eclairs hit supermarkets and the time has finally arrived.

Rule of Crumb eclairs have been available online for a while, only the profiteroles were available in supermarkets but now the eclairs have hit the freezer. They are £3 for 6 frozen eclairs and they are dairy free as well as gluten free (they do still contain egg and soya for those who have asked us)

At the moment only Sainsburys have the eclairs in stock, however it seems smaller Sainsburys stores are stocking them not just the bigger ones, we found the eclairs in a smaller branch (Nantwich, Cheshire),a branch which is always last to get everything new, so hopefully this means a good portion of the stores are stocking them unlike the fresh bakery bread!

We also have some news to share which actually happened a few months back, Feel Free sadly went into administration a while back, although the information only seems to just be filtering though.

Back in February we noticed the Feel Free website had vanished but products were still in stores so we thought nothing of it. However in the last month articles have began appearing about them going under and I got confirmation that Feel Free had folded.

Now most of their products have vanished from shelves, in Morrisons, the freezers which used to hold a variety of Feel Free frozen desserts have now vanished, instead replaced with other items or spaces just left empty.

The mini donuts do seem to still be floating around but for how long is anyones guess, Tesco do still have them in stock in some stores and Ocado still has them for sale. Most other products have completely vanished though, if you find any you are extremely lucky.

Losing Feel Free is a huge blow as they had so many products no one else did, for more info on Feel Free's administration see this article.

Products and manufacturers come and go all the time, the gluten free industry is a hard one to compete in with with its massive growth rate, more products will always keep appearing and manufacturers will keep finding ways of developing new gluten free products for Coeliacs and the gluten intolerant.