Gluten-Free & Plant-Based

Dietary demand is no longer a niche in Australian gelaterias. A cabinet without a credible vegan option loses whole tables, not individual customers, and a gelateria that cannot answer a gluten question with confidence loses the sale while it is still thinking about it.

How this page works

Every product listed here has its permanent home in a technical category — Bases, Pastes, Ripples — and appears on this page as well because its dietary status is confirmed. Nothing is duplicated: each product has exactly one address on this site, and this page is a view onto them rather than a second copy.

Why the list is currently empty, and why that is the correct answer

No Elenka specification sheet is held for the Australian range. Not one of the 114 products has a confirmed dietary status, so not one of them appears here.

That is an uncomfortable thing to publish and it is still the right output. The alternative was to populate this page from product names and catalogue prose — to reason that a fruit base is probably dairy-free, that a product whose name contains vegan is probably vegan, that a base described as lactose-free is probably fine for a customer avoiding milk. Every one of those inferences is plausible. Every one of them would be a claim this business cannot support, made in a place where a customer's health depends on it.

Elenka's 2026 catalogue does carry some line-level statements — the fruit-base section, for example, describes the line as containing no gluten and no hydrogenated fats. A line-level sentence in a marketing catalogue is not a per-product specification, and it is not what a gelateria needs when a customer asks. So it is recorded as background and published as nothing.

The specification sheets have been requested. This page populates when they arrive.

The four terms, and why they are not interchangeable

Most of the trouble on a menu comes from treating these as one idea.

The lactose-free trap is the most common in this industry, because the products sit next to each other on the shelf. A lactose-free base is a dairy base. It suits a customer with lactose intolerance and it is dangerous for a customer with a milk allergy, and the gap between those two people is invisible from behind a counter.

The Australian gluten-free standard is stricter than most

This is worth knowing before importing a claim along with a product. Australia and New Zealand define a gluten-free claim as no detectable gluten — not the 20 parts per million threshold used in much of Europe and North America. A product that is lawfully labelled gluten-free in Italy is not automatically entitled to that claim here.

The practical consequence is that a European specification sheet answering "does this contain gluten?" may not answer the question an Australian menu is actually asking. Where a gluten-free claim matters commercially, ask specifically whether the manufacturer can support the Australian standard, and get the answer in writing.

Vegan sits at the other extreme: it is not defined in the Food Standards Code at all. That does not make it a free claim — a vegan statement that turns out to be wrong is misleading conduct, and it is enforceable on that basis. Which standard governs which claim is mapped out in FSANZ Labelling Requirements. That article, like this page, is not legal advice.

Cross-contact is the part nobody plans for

Sourcing a compliant product is the easy half. The hard half is a shared kitchen.

A batch freezer that made a hazelnut gelato an hour ago is not a clean machine for a vegan batch, and a spatula that has been in a milk tub is not a clean spatula. Neither is a scoop well, which is why a well-run cabinet keeps dedicated scoops for vegan tubs rather than one rinse jar for everything.

What this needs is procedural, not technical: dedicated utensils, a documented cleaning step between batches, a fixed running order that puts allergen-free production first in the day rather than squeezing it in after, and staff who know why the order exists. A vegan claim on a menu board carries the same weight as an allergen declaration on a label, and the same person answers for it.

Building a plant-based cabinet

The base is the decision that matters. A vegan base has to build body without milk proteins, which usually means a higher stabiliser and fibre load and a different hydration schedule — and often a hot process, because those systems hydrate properly only with heat. Elenka's vegan base is specified at 65 degrees for exactly that reason: the temperature is part of the product, not a convenience.

Once the base works, most fruit pastes and many ripples follow without difficulty. The constraints appear in cream flavours, where milk fat is doing structural work as well as carrying flavour. A nut paste can replace some of it — nut fat behaves usefully like milk fat at cabinet temperature — which is why pistachio and hazelnut are the plant-based flavours that most often work on the first attempt, and why chocolate is a better second flavour than vanilla.

Expect to rebalance rather than substitute. Dropping a dairy base for a plant base at the same dosage gives a mix with less protein, less fat and a different freezing curve, and the result is usually icy rather than merely different. The method for correcting it is the same as for any other mix, and is set out in How to Balance a Gelato Recipe and Hot Base vs Cold Base.

What to write on the menu board

The wording on a cabinet label is a claim, and it is the claim a customer relies on. Three habits keep it defensible.

Say what you know, in the narrowest terms that are true. "Made without dairy ingredients" is a statement about your recipe. "Dairy-free" is a statement about the finished product in your kitchen, which includes the scoop and the cabinet. The first is easier to stand behind and it answers the question just as well.

Do not upgrade a claim. A vegan recipe made in a shared batch freezer is a vegan recipe, not a product suitable for someone with a milk allergy. Where the kitchen cannot separate production, say so at the counter rather than qualifying it in small print — the customer can then decide, which is the outcome everybody wants.

Keep the evidence. The specification sheet that supports a claim should be findable by whoever is on shift, not filed in an email from last year. If the sheet says unconfirmed, the board says nothing.

None of this is a substitute for advice on your own labelling. It is the practical floor beneath it.

Asking us for a status

If a product you use is not listed here and you need its dietary status in writing, request the specification sheet. We will put the question to the manufacturer and send you what comes back, including the answer unconfirmed if that is what it is. An unconfirmed answer is useful. An invented one is not.