Want to celebrate a special occasion with your loved ones by baking a cake or just treat yourself to some delicious homemade cupcakes or cookies, but holding back because you need to add an egg as an ingredient?
An egg is primarily used as a binder in most baked goods like cookies or brownies and also as a leavening additive while baking cakes to making it moister and fluffier in texture. As a baker, it can be difficult for you to part ways with egg used in your recipes.
Hence, we provide you with the following vegan egg alternatives, which can integrate into your recipe, to make a vegan-friendly version of your favorite sweet treat.
Flax Seeds
Flax seeds are the best naturally available egg substitutes. A mixture of freshly ground flax seeds mixed with water perfectly replicates the consistency, and texture of the egg white.
It perfectly binds all the other ingredients but has no leavening properties. So, you need to add some baking powder or other similar ingredients, to make your cakes fluffier.
A tablespoon of ground flax seed powder along with three tablespoons of water, is what you need, to replace one egg in your recipe. It has a slightly nutty taste, and are extremely easy to make, and are preferred for making crunchier delicacies like cookies.
Chia Seeds
Chia seeds are a lot like flax seeds, both in form and functionality. Because they are so similar, they can be interchanged and used, depending on their availability. Nutritionally speaking, both these are extremely fibrous and rich in micro-nutrients, so you couldn’t go wrong with either.
If you don’t like the nuttiness of flax seeds, chia seeds are a great substitute. They have a neutral taste, and make the food incredibly soft and moist, without altering the flavor.
The method of making these are similar to that of flax seeds, as you mix a tablespoon of chia seeds with three tablespoons of water. Leave the mixture as it is for about 15 minutes or more, giving the seeds time to soak up the water.
Aquafaba
Aquafaba is the newest natural egg alternative on the list. Aquafaba is the chickpeas brine, in other words, the leftover liquid from canned chickpeas. They are a wonderful binder and flavorless.
They perform very similarly to an egg white. In terms of quantity, you need three portions of Aquafaba to replace one portion (volume) of egg yolk. Aquafaba is excellent for making muffins or French Macaroons, or any other similar meringue-based desserts.
Mix the aquafaba with some sugar, and we are good to go. And whipping aquafaba makes it better for leavening.
Apple Cider Vinegar And Baking Soda
Though most of these ingredients are perfect binders, sometimes you need the leavening agent to make your desserts airier. Their role is simple, they create tiny pockets of air in between the cakes making it spongier.
To perfectly balance both the binding and leavening, the best option you could pick is a combination of vinegar and baking soda. The vinegar activates the baking soda to make it more effervescent.
Alternatively, you can also use baking powder, which just has a couple more additives to baking soda, helping it react better and release air into the layers of the cake. Hence, using vinegar and baking soda is going to bubble up the texture, and make your cake fluffier.
For the vinegar, you can either use the regular vinegar (white vinegar) or apple cider vinegar. The role of the vinegar is to be acidic, to undergo reaction with the basic soda.
Hence, other acidic substitutes you can use are molasses or brown sugar, which have the same effect.
Overripe Banana
Overripe banana is the simplest alternative available to an egg. Mash a slightly brownish, Overripe banana to a pulp and use it as an excellent binder for your dessert and keep it soft and moist.
Although being fairly easy to make, bananas have zero leavening properties. Hence to make any spongy or fluffy desserts, you need to add some other ingredients like baking soda into the mix.
Bananas are naturally sweet and have a rich flavor. So, if you don’t want its flavor to be detectable in your delicacy, pick a more neutral flavored ingredient like chia seeds.
Fruit Or Vegetable Purees
Fruit purees and vegetable purees are easily available in stores and are a good alternative to egg to be used a binder. Among vegetable purees, we recommend sweeter purees for making the dessert. So, purees made from sweet potato or pumpkin are an ideal choice.
Among fruit purees, the most commonly used one is the apple sauce. But try using an unsweetened apple sauce puree, to avoid its flavor from creeping into the dish. Like bananas, these purees too need some additional leavening agent for making cakes.
Nut Butter
Peanut butter is extremely good at holding together dry ingredients, and are an amazing option for making some cookies. But like the banana, they have a rich flavor.
Whatever you make, is going to have a Peanut butter taste to it. So, if you enjoy its flavor, they are a great binding substitute for eggs.
Silken Tofu
It’s a soft variety of creamy tofu, which is great for making muffins and brownies, as it perfectly replicates the silky texture you can get from an egg.
Whisk the silken tofu into a puree, and you can use it to make some nice moist sweet delicacies. It has good binding properties, but it needs some additional ingredients like baking powder to make the cake rise in volume.
Arrowroot Powder Or Corn Starch
One main reason egg is used for baking is because it acts as a thickening agent, and adds moisture to the dish. This comes especially handy while making pies. Corn Starch and Arrowroot powder are great egg substitutes for making pies.
It is generally made by mixing the starch or powder with water and whisking it to form a slurry. Corn starch or cornflour is much more widely used of the two, due to its availability and familiarity of being used since quite some time.
Arrowroot powder is a much healthier option and is also gluten-free and grain-free. Arrowroot powder is also wonderful for making frozen desserts but breaks down at extremely high temperatures (hence either add it at the very end or use cornflour instead).
Non-Dairy Yogurt
You need about a fourth of a cup of yogurt, to replace a single egg in your recipe.
Plain or unsweetened vanilla soy yogurt is used, to avoid imparting the flavor of the yogurt into the dish.
Store-Bought Egg Replacer
There are several commercially available Vegan Egg replacers available on the market. It tastes, feels and behaves a lot like an actual egg; hence it has the flexibility of being used to make any dish you feel like baking to satisfy your sweet tooth. They are also better suited to make fluffier cakes compared to many of the above-said alternatives.
The ingredients vary depending on which brand you opt for, but generally, it’s a mixture of one of the above options, like starch, chickpea flour, baking powder, vegetable oils, etc.
We advise you to be cautious of what you buy, as there are egg substitutes which are available in the market which aren’t vegan friendly. “Egg substitutes” are just regular eggs without the yolk.
So, make sure you see the word “egg replacer” or “vegan” on the carton, or check the ingredients on the back of the carton, before buying these.
Different substitutes are preferred for different recipes. Depending on whether you are baking a cake, a pie, a brownie or any other baked recipe, you can choose the appropriate substitute. Apart from the ones we mentioned, there are multiple other egg alternatives you can experiment with.
But the ones we mentioned are easily available, widely used and are the closest to an egg in terms of texture and functionality. So, go ahead, and start treating your taste buds to some nice moist and fluffy brownie, or a crunchy cookie, or anything your heart desires, using our vegan egg substitutes.