Avoiding eggs has been one of the particularly challenging things on my low histamine diet. I really enjoy baking, and I felt to start with like I just wasn’t able to really do it any more on this diet. I made a lot of flapjacks.

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Then, when I got a bit more confident with what I could and couldn’t eat, I looked up some vegan baking recipes. I’m used to dairy substitutes, so I’m very happy adapting a recipe to make it dairy free, but I had no idea where to start with eggs.

I looked around for some recipes, making sure they weren’t relying on histamines for flavour or an important reaction: lemon and apple cider vinegar are the key things to watch out for.

I found a few recipes for ginger cookies, and none of them quite fit because of the things I needed to avoid, or because I didn’t have the right type of flour. So, I started to work on my own one.

I’ve played around with it quite a lot and it’s now not too sticky. I wanted to make sure there was a good balance between flavour and texture, and these cookies are quite soft, and the sugar on the outside gives a great crunch. I really go in for spices, so feel free to reduce those a bit if you’re not up for a mega hit.

Ingredients

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line a baking sheet.
2. Make up flax egg by mixing flax and water, and leave for 10 minutes to thicken.
3. Melt butter, I do this in the microwave. Go gently so that it doesn’t boil.
4. Whisk together treacle and butter until smooth. Using an electric whisk makes this a lot easier.
5. Whisk in flax egg and sugar, making sure that the butter mixture isn’t too hot.
6. Sieve and whisk in spices, baking soda, salt and half of the flour.
7. Whisk in rest of flour. The dough should hold together and be slightly soft. If this gets difficult with the whisk, you can swap to a wooden spoon or even your hands.
8. Shape the miture into balls, and gently press to flatten.
9. (optional) Roll each ball in granulated sugar.
10. Space evenly on tray, allowing a bit of room for them to grow. Cook for about 10 minutes- the cookies will still be quite soft when they come out, but they will harden as they cool.
11. Let cool for about 10 minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack.
12. Store in an airtight tin for up to a week.

Tips

• I like to line my baking sheet with a silicone liner that can be washed and reused.
• If you only have plain flour, you can convert it by adding a teaspoon of baking powder.
• I make my own ground flax by gringing flax seeds (also called linseeds) in my coffee grinder until they’re a fine powder.
• When melting the butter in the microwave, I use a mug so that it’s easier to get it out when it’s hot.
• Dysautonomia tip: you can add in a lot more salt if you need to as the spices help to mask it.