Archive for October, 2007
Egg substitute question
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007Angela asked me via MySpace:
What is a good subsitute for eggs?
Eggs in vegan baking are pretty easy to substitute especially if your recipe only calls for 1 or 2 eggs. Things like pancakes, muffins, cookies, quick breads, cakes, brownies all do VERY well without eggs.
There are four properties that are unique to baking with eggs that you’ll need to substitute for: liquid, leavening (rising), binding and taste. Most vegan baking recipes use a combination of extra liquid, baking powder for leavening, and fruit pectin for binding (apple sauce or banana). There is also potato and tapioca starch sold as Ener-G Egg Replacer you can buy at natural food store that will leaven/liquid/bind but its completely tasteless. I’ve also used ground flaxseed with water or peanut butter with lesser success.
There is another vegan trick for making cake that is, in my opinion, brilliant. If you use baking soda with some apple cider vinegar it will give you lots of leavening in the batter and make the cake airy and spongy.
Also, food with eggs taste good because they have extra fat and richness. However, you don’t need to add more fat to make it taste good. For baked goods, I flavor using a variety of spices to give interesting tastes (e.g., cinnamon, ground cloves, nutmeg, allspice, ginger).