Replacing Eggs in Recipes

by Kelley Lindberg


Last week, I talked about how sometimes making a favorite family recipe safe for a food-allergic person can be as simple as replacing one or two ingredients with a safe substitute. This week, I’ll offer a few ideas for replacing eggs in recipes.

If someone in your family is allergic to eggs, it can seem like a real challenge to eliminate eggs from your favorite recipes. Fortunately, there are several ways to replace eggs that really work, and in most cases no one will be able to tell you’re using a safe substitute. This is true for recipes that aren’t loaded down with eggs – for example, you wouldn’t want to try to make a quiche with one of these recipes, and brownies and angel food cake don’t work well, either.

But for recipes calling for three eggs or less, here are some of the egg replacements I’ve used. (The following quantities replace one egg. If you need to replace 2 eggs, double the substitute, etc.):

1 tsp baking powder, mixed with 1 Tbsp water or apple juice and 1 Tbsp white vinegar – This mixture works beautifully in most baked goods – cakes, breads, cookies, etc. Breads rise nicely, and you can’t taste the vinegar. This is my favorite home-made substitute to use in baking. It’s great even if you aren’t allergic to eggs and you just run out in the middle of a recipe! It will foam up (think science fair volcano!), so it’s fun for kids to help with.

Ener-G Egg Replacer – This is a great commercially available egg replacer mix made from potato starch and tapioca flour. It comes in a box, usually in the baking aisle. It works great in most baked goods, just like the vinegar mix above. You just mix a spoonful with some warm water, and you’re good to go. The box has lots of great recipes on it, too.

1/2 of a ripe banana, mashed – This works great in pancake mixes and other recipes where you want a banana flavor.

1/4 c. applesauce – Baked goods won’t bake rise as much if you just use applesauce; they might be a little more dense. Try using this in cookie recipes, pancake recipes, etc.

1 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 3 Tbsp of warm water – This works well, but some nut-allergic people are also allergic to flax, so use this with caution.

If you’re making a casserole that calls for eggs, you can try using a soy yogurt or soy sour cream instead. (Tofutti makes soy sour cream.) Or try using the Ener-G egg replacer.

Some recipes, such as breads, call for brushing eggs on top of the item as a glaze. Try brushing melted safe margarine or brushing rice milk on the bread instead.

I’ve heard Xanthum gum can be used as a binder, but I’ve never tried it.

If you have any egg-replacement ideas to share, please leave a comment with your great suggestions!

Over the coming weeks, I’ll talk about peanut and tree nut replacements, milk substitutions, and wheat replacements.

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.