My littlest one turned two this week! This meant more practice for my vegan baking skills, with the best results yet. The War World II era chocolate cupcakes (made without eggs and butter due to food rations) were definitely the best vegan cupcakes I’ve ever made. And adding Oreos to the icing was a stroke of genius. Crushed up Oreos can really hide all kinds of problems: Lumpy? Weird taste? Doesn’t matter! It’s got cookies in it!
Birthday parties are always a little stressful with food
allergies, for no other reason then there are at least THREE of the top nine
food allergens in most cakes. If you have a peanut or tree nut flavor you can easily
get four of the top nine. And that’s not including the rest of the food. It’s pretty
hard to think of any dessert without any of the top nine food allergens in it. A
fruit popsicle? Or fruit candy? I think that's it.
A not exhaustive list of delicious desserts that have some
of the top nine most common food allergens:
- Cake- wheat, milk, eggs, plus tree nuts/peanuts could be hidden in there
- How easy is cake to make allergen friendly? Not very. Milk, eggs, and wheat are like 90% of a normal cake. Plus, even if you have a good vegan recipe, once you have you switch out the flour you are going to be dealing with something very different than what you started out with.
- Then there’s the icing. No matter how long you try to whip that plant-based butter, you are never going to be able to beat it into a fluffy, creamy, delicious buttercream.
- Pies- wheat, milk, maybe eggs, tree nuts, peanuts
- Pies are a little more forgiving than cake. While some pie fillings may be off limits (chess pie or custard), a lot of fillings are fruity and delicious and safe. And the crust, while arguably the best part of the pie, is still just a small part of the whole. You may have a soggy bottom, but you could still conceivably make some sort of vessel for the delicious apple pie filling. Plus, store bought crusts only have wheat in them, no butter. How do they make it flaky delicious? Lard, of course! The other animal based, solid fat. Yum!
- Cookies- wheat, milk, eggs, maybe tree nuts/peanuts
- In general, I’ve had more trouble with cookies than cakes. The vegan butter plus egg replacement seem to create a dry, crumbly, sad cookie and if you put in enough chocolate chips to cover up the taste, you might as well just eat straight chocolate.
- Cheesecake- wheat, milk, eggs, maybe tree nuts/peanuts
- I thought making a cheesecake without the top allergens was impossible- all of the best vegan recipes are made with cashews (tree nuts) or tofu (soy). But I did stumble across a recipe using store bought vegan cream cheese. I haven’t made it and don’t know how good it is, but I guess there’s at least a way you could try to make it. That graham cracker crust is still going to be a struggle though- maybe some ground up cereal?
- Pudding- milk
- Pudding is easy enough to substitute in a nondairy milk. The Jell-O website even has instructions on how to make the substitutions. If you make it with coconut milk, it’s just as creamy as the real thing, but it does have a coconut flavor. If you use other milks, it won’t be as thick. But it’s still something resembling pudding!
- Mousse- milk and eggs
- There’s a surprisingly good chocolate mousse recipe that’s made with avocados. However, one recipe book called it "unusual chocolate mousse" which is a pretty unfortunate name. Pretty sure I want most of desserts on the more usual side of the spectrum.
- Brownies- wheat, milk, eggs
- Without eggs? It just can’t be done. Not a fudgy brownie, at least. It’s always going to be more cakey. And a cakey brownie is NOT a true brownie.
I made some vegan banana muffins with chocolate chips for a
breakfast potluck at work. A coworker said “Oh, they don’t taste unhealthy.”
Ahhh… thanks? I think the goal is for them to be HEALTHY and taste UNHEALTHY.
Not the other way around. Anyway. Good luck making your desserts safe!
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