Egg Replacers

Come see me this Saturday (May 9, 2009, 9 am – 5 pm) at the UFAN booth at the Mother’s Day Garden Fair. It’s being held at Conservation Garden Park, 8215 South 1300 West, in West Jordan, UT. Click here for more info.

In my baking, I’m always on the lookout for great ways to replace eggs so that my son can share his baked treats with his egg- and milk-allergic best friend. This weekend, I finally tried a new egg replacer product that I’ve been hearing about on the UFAN email list for months. It’s called Ener-G Egg Replacer, it's tapioca based, and I found it at Smith’s.

On the back of the Ener-G box, there are several great recipes, including an incredibly simple and allergen-friendly recipe for sponge cake.

On Friday night, I was hosting a graduation party for a friend who just received his master’s degree at Weber State U (and he just happens to be the dad of my son’s egg- and milk-allergic best friend).

So decided to test the sponge cake recipe and turn it into a jelly roll. It worked great! I followed the recipe on the box, then baked it in a 10” x 15” pan. Next I spread the cake with strawberry jelly and rolled it up. Finally, I frosted the cake with white icing, draped a Fruit-by-the-Foot fruit snack over it like a ribbon, and voila – a diploma cake!

I haven’t tried the Ener-G Egg Replacer in anything else yet, but the cake worked out nicely, so I’m definitely going to use it in my other recipes to see how it works. They have a website with recipes and more products here.

Here are my other tried-and-true egg replacers:

For each egg called for in the recipe, substitute:

• 1 tsp baking powder, 1 T water or apple juice, and 1 T white vinegar – This foams up rapidly (like a science fair volcano), so it’s fun to do with kids and it works great in baked recipes like breads and cakes. This actually works better than the applesauce or banana options, because the foaming action makes breads rise a little better, I think. It’s also cheap and easy, using ingredients you already have on hand. (No dashing to the store!)

• 3 T apple sauce – This works well in cookies.

• 1/2 mashed banana – This works well in cookies (if you want the banana taste). A friend just told me she used mashed banana instead of eggs in pancakes she made using Bisquick’s mix, and she loved it.
  
  
• 1 T ground flax seed mixed with 3 T warm water – Actually, I’ve never tried this, because people with nut allergies have a higher chance of also being allergic to flax. But I know others on the UFAN mailing list have used ground flax seed with great results, so if you know you’re not allergic to flax, go ahead and give it a try.