Egg allergy and substitutes

[Elilly]

DD has recently been diagnosed with an allergy to egg whites. I've been trying to bake cupcakes at home to find a good substitute for her birthday next month but have come up way short - quite literally the cupcakes are very, very flat. Anyone have ideas on a substitute for eggs that does well in baking? TIA!

[lizajane]

i have a great recipe (from an egg allergy friend for my egg allergy son) for eggless cupcakes. VERY yummy.

applesauce cake:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup applesauce
1 1/2 cups flour

preheat oven to 350. cream first 5 ingredients together. stir in applesauce and flour. grease an 8x8 pan and pour in batter. bake 30-45 minutes. cake can be topped with powdered sugar or icing. this recipe makes one layer cake. (i have had it as cupcakes, too.)

my friend says you can add shredded carrots to make it like carrot cake, and she had it as her wedding cake with buttercream icing.

yum yum!!!

[nwaddellr]

I believe you can substitute tofu (especially the silken kind) for eggs when you bake.

[Elilly]

Thanks for the recipe! I'm going to try it tonight. While on the subject, have you found any ready made soups that do not use egg in the noodles? TIA for any other helpful hints too.

[lizajane]

i hadn't thought about noodle soups. i am glad you said that because while i am super careful about reading labels, i can imagine i might give him a bite of soup i was eating without really thinking about it. so far, i have only fed him veggie soup (which he LOVES!)

i suppose you could buy a non-noodle soup, or a broth, and then add your own pre cooked noodles. i realize that makes work, though, when you might be trying to get something easy.

let me know if you like the cake! i am making it for schuyler's mother's morning out class on thursday. i have the only allergy kid, so they asked me to bring the halloween snack. i am glad they did, because i would be pretty darn mad if my kid came home covered in orange icing or something 100% sugary that i would never feed him!

[Elilly]

Well the best laid plans... Anyway, I'm really going to try it tonight. I was just looking at the instructions and it said bake for 30-45 minutes. Is that right or is it something more specific? The only reason I ask is that I'm not the world's greatest baker.

PS- what are your sons symptoms with the egg allergy? Is his allergy to both egg yolks and whites or just the whites? I took DD to her ped for chronic diarrhea and ended up at the allergist but I have not really noted that eggs were a problem until we did the scratch test. Just curious as to what your experience was when diagnosing the allergy.

[JElaineB]

I have never tried it but there is a product called Ener-g Egg Replacer that is an egg-free substitue that you can use to replace eggs in baking. You can order it online or find it in your local natural foods type store or possibly in the health food section of a supermarket.

http://www.ener-g.com/store/detail.aspx?sn=MilkAndEggSubstitutes&id=97&cat=8

Jennifer
mom to Jacob 9/27/02

[lizajane]

i haven't made it yet, so i can't tell you about bake times. sorry! i would bake for say, 25 min for cupcakes and then do the toothpick test. just to be sure. and then just check again every so often if it doesn't come out clean.

schuyler is alleric to egg whites. we waited until after 12 months to give him egg whites and then i THOUGHT we were ok. i guess i just didn't realize a nasty diaper here or there was egg white related. but then we went to the beach with my parents. there is only a food lion there, so i had to buy him eggo waffles instead of his normal vann's oragnic wheat free. i thought FOREVER that he had a wheat allergy, and i kept not giving him wheat. but then, i decided that maybe i was wrong, so i bought the eggos. well, he was a DISASTER all week. NASTY diapers, whining, clinging, miserable... it was AWFUL. i finally took him to the dr at the beach- one hour from our house. they made me get abdominal x-rays (um, $200 later...) and said that he was just constipated and that the nasty diapers could actually be a symptom of severe constipation! um, weird.

so i didn't really believe them, and convinced that he was allergic to wheat, i asked me ped to test him. she did a blood test and said she would run it for all the major allergies- wheat, eggs, milk, soy, peanuts... turns out we were giving him eggs every time we gave him wheat. like a piece of toast and a scrambled egg. or the eggo waffles that have wheat and eggs (whereas the vann's didn't have either).

but the exciting news was that we found out he is not allergic to peanuts. and since that one is so scary, it was really nice to know ahead of time. i just recently started giving him some peanut butter, even though he was only 18 months old, since we don't have a family history and he already tested a-ok.

so to make a short story long... :)

[Elilly]

Mmmmm good! They were great even w/o the frosting. I filled the muffin tins about 3/4 of the way and this recipe made 12 cupcakes. Good estimating on the 25 minutes. I had them in for 22. These could become habit forming!

[Elilly]

Thanks. I'll look for that too as I'd like to use some of my regular recipes and not have to search for all new recipes for some of our favorites.

[Elilly]

I found a recipe for chocolate cake that was pretty good as well. I realize that you may not be ready for that with him yet but when the time comes...
Prepare a small package of chocolate instant pudding with 2 cups milk. Add a large cake mix (19 oz) and 1 c choc chips. Bake at 350 for 40 min. Even dh liked it and he was very skeptical.

[cdmamatutu]

My mom is allergic to eggs. I believe she has a recipe for egg substitute which contains ground flaxseed and water. If you're interested, I can ask her and post it here.

[Elilly]

That would be great! Also, does she know of any chicken noodle soups (campbells or progresso type) that don't use egg noodles. I have tried making it from scratch but DD still pines for her campbells soup. Thank you so much.

[kwc]

I've been researching this too as my 14 m/o DD is severely allergic to eggs.
I haven't tried this yet, but apparently you can mix 1T ground flaxseed and 3T warm water (let sit for a few minutes) and substitute it for an egg. Here's an URL with more:
http://www.ochef.com/687.htm

Karen

[kwc]

(wiping applesauce cake crumbs off of laptop keyboard)

Thanks Erica for the question and Liza for the recipe... I have discovered that it goes very well with ginger gelato from Trader Joe's (also egg-free). Hopefully, there will be some cake left for DD, who is the egg-allergic one!

Have either of you tried the book "Bakin' without Eggs"... it doesn't sound promising but the reviews at Amazon were good...
I am thinking of getting it....

http://tinyurl.com/6n6hm

Karen

[cdmamatutu]

My mom hasn't gotten back to me with the flaxseed recipe yet, but I believe it is very similar to the previous post. I'll have to ask her about noodles...not sure what she does for those. Here is another egg substitute recipe my mom sent me a while back, but I've never tested it. She got this from a friend who swears by it:

Gelatin can be used to replace eggs in your baking of cakes, cookies, cornbread or any recipe you may want to use.
For substitute of one egg: l tsp. gelatin, 3 T cold water, and 7 tsp. boiling water.
For 2 eggs: 2 tsp. gelatin, l/3 C cold water, l/2 C boiling water.
For 3 eggs: l T gelatin, l/2 C cold water, l/2 C boiling water.

Do these steps before you start to make cookies and cakes:
A. Place cold water in mixing bowl and sprinkle in gelatin to soften. Mix thoroughly w/spoon.
B. Add boiling water. Stir until dissolved.
C. Place in freezer to thicken while preparing any cake or cookie. When you get to the place where recipe calls for addition of eggs, take gelatin (now thickened) and beat with mixer until frothy. (This step is most important). Then add to batter recipe in place of eggs.

HTH, and I'll post if I find any more recipes. :)
Jaina

[Elilly]

Thank you so much Jaina.

[Elilly]

I do not have the cookbook but for the $ it is worth a shot. Thanks for the link.