Pancakes/cakes

I have been experimenting with baking without eggs as they are on our shortlist of things that Nate reacts to. I liked the pancakes we had been served at the MomenTums launch so decided to tweak the batter to make cakes and to match what I had in the cupboard already (it was 6pm on a Sunday, no chance of getting to the shops)

I used this mixture to make a scotch type pancake and cakes

Pancake/Cake
1 cup of Gluten free Bread flour blend
1 1/2 teaspoons baking power
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 can Coconut Cream
1/2 Coconut milk (I use Koko)
4 Dessertspoons Sugar

Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients, mix well. If you are making cakes fill up cupcake cases and bake in a preheated oven for 13/15 minutes at 180 C
Pancakes - I left the batter while the cakes were baking and then heated up a non stick frying pan with a little oil, ladle in some of the mixture to make a pancake roughly 7cm in diameter cook them for a few minutes until golden (when you see lots of bubbles on the surface that's a good time to turn them) and then turn them over and cook until golden

Cooking the pancakes

These are the first cakey cakes I've made since baking without eggs, a lot of vegan cakes end up very oily or heavy, these are lovely and light. We then decorated them with a little icing.

These cakes didn't last long

Living with possible allergies

Nate as you might have gathered suffers from an intolerance to Dairy and Soya. At the minute we are waiting for a referral to the paediatric allergy specialist because we have had several instances of him coming out in hives and we have an interesting family background with all things health related. Recently, just over a month ago we had a week long bout of hives. They were coming up within half an hour of eating so after this happening while eating his breakfast we decided to see the GP. Which is why we are now waiting for our referral to come through although she was very honest and said we never know what is/was causing the hives.

Around the time he came down with croup we'd also noticed something strange, we'd been out for supper and had prawns, Nate's first time trying them. As soon as he'd had a bite he complained about his lips feeling funny. We gave him a big gulp of water and swore not to try prawns again for a while. With the hives and the funny lips we had decided to ask about seafood being an issue for Nate.

This leads me to yesterday I made supper, normally Nate doesn't eat with us as he has tea at nursery however, he didn't eat much at nursery yesterday. I made pasta puttanesca and put an anchovy paste, which had come with an order, in the sauce (not thinking) as soon as Nate took a bite he complained about the heat and burning in his mouth. It took a moment for me to fully realise what I'd done. I didn't think anchovies were an issue but I hadn't looked at what the ingredients which contained butter along with other potential allergens. This I had to look up on the internet as in opening the pot (last week the first time I used it) I had to take off the ingredients list.

Why have a container that you have to remove the ingredient list to open it? I can't be the only person who has foods their toddler can't eat in the house?

What's causing the hives?

Recently we've noticed that Nate has been coming out in hives soon after eating. We have begun to try and work out what is causing these hives. Nate already avoids dairy and largely soya due to intolerances to them I'm not looking forward to adding anything else to that list.

Last years hives

We have on our list of potential suspects tomato, mayonnaise or brown bread. We're not 100% sure that he has had the same food each time the hives have come out. He loves tomatoes but noticed this time last year every time he had them he came out in hives so we avoided them until early this year when there was no reaction. 

This mornings hives

We are thinking it may be brown bread as we recently have changed to brown bread due to the recommendation of the nutritionalist and this morning while having his toast we noticed his legs were covered in hives. However, he hadn't eaten any brown bread when he came out in hives yesterday so we may be looking for something else as well.