Egg-less recipes

To go along with my previous post that talks about allergies in schools, here are some of the recipes I was able to find and make for my son's lunch box. Finding some of these was not easy. Despite the huge folder of recipe websites (and the huge stack of cookbooks in my own shelves), most searches for egg-free baking came up empty. And since my family is not vegetarian or vegan (though I do own a vegetarian cookbook that I sometimes use), I don't have alot of information on how to replace non-vegan items in recipes.

This recipes was for banana bread squares, which I found on the website The Post Punch Kitchen. I was directed to this site by Jennifer, everyone's favorite vegan, from the Vegan Lunchbox blog. When my own search came up with minimal items, and no recipes for waffles, I emailed Jennifer and begged for her help. She came to my rescue with the website, which provided me with a good amount of recipes that took no eggs. (Thanks again Jennifer!)

I found this banana cake rather gummy in texture, though it was very bananaey (is that a word?) in taste. Don't know yet what the verdict is from the 7 year old. (Edit - He liked it just fine!) If he likes it and I end up making it again for him, I will be adding in some cinnamon, and I think I will also top the cake, or crunch up and add into the batter, some dried banana chips. I just think it could use the additional texture. I also will be baking it for a few extra minutes longer than the called for 45 minutes.

This recipe came from Today's Parent magazine and is for Glazed Cinnamon Pinwheels, though as you can see, I didn't glaze them. I didn't really think the kids needed the extra sugar in a glaze on a cookie.

These remind me of when my grandmother used to make pies and roll the scraps of dough with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. The look isn't quite the same, but the flavor was pretty close, though I think I like my grandmother's pastry dough better than this pastry. Feedback from this was, "Yummy! I got two cookies and they were good!"

This is the recipe I initially asked Jennifer for, a waffle recipe, specifically Apple Waffles. They will be featured in tomorrow's lunch box, probably without the side of syrup though. These cooked up brown and crispy without a hint of the green from the granny smith apple shredded into it. And my kitchen smelled so good! My three year old and I taste tested them (after he helped me make them) and found them to be quite flavorful with the mix of spices (cinnamon, allspice, nutmet and cloves) as well as nice and crispy. He liked them better cold, I probably would have liked them with butter on them and warmer. For now the remaining live in the freezer to be toasted up in the toaster before being cut into sticks and placed into lunch.

One thing to note about both the waffle and the banana bread recipes - both call for using soy milk and soy yogurt. I replaced both of those with regular 1% milk and regular vanilla yogurt. We've found that when my son has too much soy in his diet, he tends to have severe mood swings, perhaps because of the affects of the soy on his hormones. Since I've been much more vigalant about reading labels on packaged products such as cereal to check for the addition of eggs, I've noticed that most cereals, and a few other surprise items, include soy in them already. There may be no connection between soy and mood swings, but I think for now I'll just avoid additional soy in his diet, just to be sure.


This is the lunch he went to school with this morning: green apple slices, 2 cinnamon swirl cookies, banana bread square, strawberries, a sesame seed bagel with strawberry cream cheese, a small box of raisins, just in case (the same box has been to school 3 times now - sooner or later I won't pack enough and he'll eat them,) and a yogurt tube. He was happy with the selections and came home with a few strawberries left that he ate as a snack, and that same box of raisins.

I'll keep posting recipes as I make them!