I want to make allergy kid a cake. I’ve made allergy kid cakes in the past and if you have various allergies this is a good blog, Eggless Baking, but the recipes for cake which don’t have egg will have things like nuts or soya. The recipes that don’t have any ingredient on her allergy-intolerant list don’t produce a cake she likes. My usual conversation with allergy kid goes something like this:
me, “I want to make you a cake”
allergy kid, “..oh no..please don’t…I don’t like cakes!”
me, “..but I want to come up with a recipe you’ll like..and..”
allergy kid, “..no..no..really mum don’t try, you know I’ll hate them.”
A few weeks ago it occurred to me yeast dough cakes was the only way to go. To make a cake with structure to hold air for lightness without eggs, has to be yeast based.
Sweet yeast cakes however have eggs and butter to make them soft. I can replace the butter, Tartine has a panettone recipe using olive oil or I use other fats but replacing eggs is still the hard part. In the yeast cakes the eggs are there to soften the dough rather than to provide lift, air and hold as they do in normal cakes. This is one of my baking projects this year.
I suspect there will be lots of ”aarrghh” coming from my baking room, wasted flour and plenty of finger-tapping.
In The Meantime
With a suggestion from Dan, I turned his Slider Buns here, into a sweet version for allergy kid yesterday and she loved them. I could make them sweeter as they were on the cusp, she thought they were good enough.
I added slightly more water, more light muscovado sugar and vanilla paste. The vanilla paste provided a lovely scent, really lovely. I went for the paste as I didn’t think of adding vanilla pod when I was heating the rice milk. Vanilla paste gives the crumb the lovely black specks hard to see in photo but noticeable when opening them.
She had them with strawberry jam. They were very popular with the rest of the family.
Last night’s conversation with allergy kid was how to turn these into jam doughnuts?
I would like to make them into baked doughnuts rather than fry as I don’t often deep fry. How do I roll baked doughnuts into the sugar afterwards? We decided to go for an icing sugar finish rather than granulated/caster sugar.
Still searching for the light texture sweet yeast cake. Gregoire gave me a tip to look into Italian doughs. I’m going to dive-in with a normal recipe and omit the eggs to see the results.
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Another suggestion: how about modifying a recipe for a baked yeast doughnut?
http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2011/03/29/baked-doughnuts-recipe-cinnamon-sugar/
Thanks Dawn – will have a look at that link.
Hi Azélia – you’re amazing and with lots of determination! I do hope that your allergy daughter realises how lucky she is to have you!
hi Renée – she does appreciate I’m not a ready-meal mum and realises how boring her diet would be if she didn’t have someone who cooked interesting things for her. My biggest worry is for her future and when she has to look after herself, it won’t be easy.
Hello Azélia, if you read French, you may want to take a look at this website: makanaibio.com. Flo has an allergic family and has developed quite a lot of allergen-free recipes, including eggless ones. In the interest of full disclosure, I must reveal that Flo is my niece although it doesn’t change the fact that her blog is a great resource…
Thanks Marie-Claude for the link I will check it out but unfortunately I don’t know French…if I see a recipe I want to try, I shall come to you for a rough translation. x
Hi Azélia, you are a great mum, so careful and always looking forward to do something special for your family.
I would like to have one of these cakes for tea.