A sweet, light distraction- who says you can't eat cake?

Let's take a little break from divisive politics for a moment. For those of you with food allergies or sensitivities like me, it is easy to feel deprived sometimes. Or you succumb to the forbidden foods and then you feel sick as a dog for awhile. No More! Here is one of my alternative recipes...

Food Substitues for Traditional Pancakes!

VEGAN, WHEAT-FREE & DELICIOUS

In 2009, I was diagnosed with food allergies to the holy trinity: wheat, dairy and eggs!

At first it felt like a death sentence until I adjusted. At that time, there were not a lot of alternatives so I went without. Then I started tinkering with traditional recipes to see if I could make palatable substitutes. The flour and egg replacements were the hardest to come by. No longer!

I'm not a vegan, I can eat meat, I just can't eat animal by-products: eggs and milk. Everyone is different! But this recipe is also good for vegans.

Here is the traditional recipe on the right:

The JUST Egg is actually Mungo Bean. It foments after a few days once opened, but is an awesome egg substitute for baking! Much better than other natural binders such as rice and vinegar! About 1/3 of a cup is equal to 1-2 eggs, but play with the ratios. The Publix grocery store chain carries it. You can ask your grocery store to special order products too.

Regarding milk substitutes, there is now a plethora of choices. When it comes to baking you have to tinker to get a perfect combination. Relative to cow's milk: rice milk is thin, soy milk is sweet, almond can be too nutty in flavor sometimes etc. Depends what you can eat too.

Regarding my butter substitute, the Smart Balance contains soy, so NOT good for those of you allergic to soy! But it is similar to the solid state of traditional butter to hold.

The best replacement for wheat flour that I have found is the genius combination of alternatives flours created by King Arthur's flour. You can buy directly from them on their website https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/ . Publix does carry some of their products too.

Why I call them genius is they combine a number of ingredients to create the tacky stickiness found in traditional wheat and semolina flours. Years ago, I spent hours manually combining various ratios of these different type of flours, which was a LOT of guess work and a LOT of failures with very heavy "sinker" muffins etc. The great thing about https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/ is they have taken the guesswork and mad scientist aspect out of the equation for us! (That doesn't mean some of you still won't have fun tinkering.)

Here is a picture of the ingredients in the box of King Arthur flour above. This box comes with individual packets in it. But shop their other products too!

I also must give a shout out to artisanal bakers creating their own amazing alternative products, like Rebekah at https://eatmorebakery.com/ If you are ever in Asheville, NC, make sure to order her breads online for local pick-up. She still has the best vegan wheat free bread products that I have ever tasted. But no matter how much I tried to convince her, she will NOT ship her products as she is concerned about denigrating her brand! Artists! :) Worst case take a road trip and find out for yourself!

I will end with on one of my own quotes from my book Love & Taxes on page 117:

"Adversity Open our Eyes to new Methods."