Hello everyone!

From time and again I have seen hundreds of people struggling with egg substitutes. Specially in India where if 2 people in a gathering of 100 are egg free, the dessert is automatically egg free. Lol. 😁
But that’s a fact. So let’s talk about egg substitutes today.

When I started off as a baker and was ‘almost pushed’ towards egg free, I resorted to those ‘silly egg conversion charts’. I’m sure many of you have seen them from time and again on the internet and being shared on this group as well.

Well, after spending almost 4.5 years in the field, I am happy to break it to you – THOSE CHARTS ARE ABSOLUTE CRAP !!!!
They will never ever work except if you’re having a lucky day!
Do you want to know why they won’t work? That’s because they are too over simplified! They never give you any reasons. They give you choices.. as if you can pick out whatever you want and it will work. Well it won’t!

Before we get into egg substitutes, 2 most important ‘Smriti’s personal’ rules are –
1. Never try to substitute more than 2 eggs in a standard 8″ cake or 12-15 cookie dough type of recipes. The results will never ever be even close.
2. If you don’t want to work hard, and still want the best-est-est results, don’t substitute eggs in a recipe, use an egg free recipe altogether.

You have to understand what an egg does in a recipe to be able to replace it.
Blindly replacing an egg with anything and everything, will never give you the same result. Perhaps because you didn’t understand, what the function of the egg in the original recipe was.

Here’s my list of egg substitutes according to the function of the egg (keeping in mind the 2 golden rules mentioned above)

1) STARCH
Egg yolk acts as a thickener in a lot of recipes like custards, Cremeux, mousse, ice creams etc. Starch will help thicken the mixture. Now which starch to be used depends upon what texture you’re looking for.

2) POTATO
Eggs are used to give enrich and give a soft texture to bread dough and patties. Adding some mushed potatoes will give you a similar texture. You may have to adjust the quantity according to how moist you want your dough to be.

3) SOUR YOGURT + VINEGAR + BAKING SODA
Eggs help in leavening, mostly in cake batters. This concoction will help with the rising of the cake pretty similarly. Vegans can use coconut cream with lemon juice to mimic the lactic acid effect of the yogurt.

4) FLAX/CHIA SEED GEL / BANANA / APPLE SAUCE
Eggs help to bind cookie dough. In this case you can substitute it with banana mush or seed gels and it will work perfectly. The only things is that you would have to bake the cookies for longer to get rid of the moisture.

5) AQUAFABA
One of the most popular functions of eggs is the whites being used to foam up into a meringue. Be it for macarons, nougat, kisses, Japanese wobbly Cheesecake, pavalova…. really anything that needs air. Aquafaba is the perfect replacement here, which whips up pretty similarly to egg whites. The only things is that if you’re baking with this, you have to bake it low and slow for a long time. Otherwise it will collapse.

That’s it. These are the only things you have to know about baking egg free.

Now I’m not going to spoon feed you with quantities of how much of these to replace 1 egg. That’s because there is no standard calculation. You might require more or less depending upon a recipe.
Do your own experiments and determine the quantity of each of these according to final result you’re looking for.

All the best!!
And for the love of God, ditch those charts!

PS – That’s my perfect #EggFree chocolate cake in the picture with my all time favourite, Silkiest Vanilla Buttercream.