Let the baking begin!

When you read the title, what did you think of first?  Cookies and cake, or smoking something aromatic?  Just wondering ;)

Today BabyT had another oral challenge to baked milk at her allergist's office.  This required me to bake a bland coffee cake last night.  Which turned out to be a mad scramble at 9pm because we didn't actually *have* any fresh milk in the house. 

We feed it to her at the office while watching for signs of an allergic reaction.  She gets another "dose", aka cake snack, every 20 minutes.

I have no idea how parents of kids with anaphylactic reactions go through this - it must be nervewracking.  As far as we know, T's milk allergy is not life-threatening - she does react pretty strongly right away but we mostly see hives and itching, and sometimes puking.  Thankfully it doesn't affect her breathing.

This is the third time in 18 months that we've tried the challenge.  She failed the first two after the first tiny "dose" of cake.  This time she ate one piece (with great enthusiasm!) and was fine.  Then another.  Still fine.  Two more, and *still* fine.  So after a final 45 minute observation they sent us home with a "prescription" to feed her baked goods with milk (equivalent of 2 oz or less per serving) several times a week.  Who doesn't love that?

We went to Blue C Sushi to celebrate afterward.  I thought about buying a Trophy cupcake for her to eat tomorrow, but realized that:

1.  The buttercream frosting is definitely *not* approved - she still can't have any unbaked dairy.
2.  I have no idea how much dairy is actually in their cupcakes. 

by yvestown on Flickr

Which means for these first couple of months at least, I need to bake the goodies myself.  The first batch is easy - we are going to decorate heart-shaped cookies for Valentine's Day, so instead of making vegan sugar cookies, I'll just make regular ones.

But after that?  I need some suggestions!  I'd prefer not to stuff my 2 year old with sugar, so relatively healthy recipes would be great.  Savory recipes are also appreciated, like muffins or quick breads that aren't sweet. 

After about 6 months of eating a little bit of baked milk, they think her immune system will get used to it, and in the summer we'll try a challenge with uncooked dairy.  At this point, we've been living dairy-free with relative ease, and will probably continue for our own health, but it will be nice to free BabyT from having to carry Epi-Pens, and being so vigilant about whether there's some dairy ingredient lurking in whatever she eats. 

Today I'm still keeping an eye on her, and we've got our fingers crossed that we don't have a recurrence of the "8 hour Delayed Vomiting Incident" which we've seen on multiple occasions.  Her doctor said that's happened only once after a good challenge in the 20 years he's been practicing, so I'm hoping not to double his stats ;)

Bring on the yummy milk-containing cake-cookie-muffin-cupcake-bread recipes!