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How to bake without eggs

Carton of Large Eggs

The majority of baking recipes, apart from breads, involve eggs in addition to ingredients like flour, sugar, butter and leavening. Eggs are crucial parts of many recipes, but with the big egg recall going on, you might want to consider some options for egg free baking. Cooking eggs thoroughly and washing your hands when handling eggs should drastically reduce your odds of having a food safety problem at home. That said, it is always good to have options if you don’t want to use eggs for a while or want to do some baking and just noticed that your last dozen is part of the recall.

Eggs act as binders, thickeners and as leavening agents in recipes like cakes and cookies. They do a lot, so taking eggs out of a dish is not as simple as just omitting them from a recipe as written – especially if that recipe calls for more than one egg. You can substitute your eggs with an egg replacer, a common vegan baking technique that calls for using a mixture of ingredients to mimic the function of eggs (like adding 1 tbsp of cornstarch or potato starch mixed with 1 tbsp water), which works fairly well in many cookie and quickbread recipes, especially when just substituting one egg. Another easy thing to do is to simply choose recipes that don’t use eggs in the first place and start baking them while you wait for the recall to pass.

There are plenty of cookie recipes that don’t use eggs to begin with. Shortbread is a great example, and there are many variations on the classic shortbread to try. Many chocolate chip cookies will work well with the egg replacer suggested above.

There is a popular eggless chocolate cake recipe that started out as a war-time recipe when eggs were scarce. Often called Wacky Cake, this egg-free type of chocolate cake calls for vinegar, which reacts with baking soda in the cake batter to give the cake plenty of lift for a tender, rich-tasting cake. You can use this technique in a Chocolate Bundt Cake, a Chocolate Layer Cake or even in Chocolate Cupcakes. You won’t have a problem coming up with a frosting that is egg free to top them off with! Chocolate Pudding Cake is a completely different type of chocolate cake that also uses no eggs.

And since we’re on the subject of eggless baking, don’t forget that most pie recipes don’t use any eggs in the first place and are great choices for egg-free baking. The same goes for tart recipes, like this Cream Cheese Key Lime Pie, and Tarte Tatin.

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9 Comments
  • Brenda
    August 24, 2010

    For a long time now I have used pasteurized eggs (either in the shell, which are hard to find, or in cartons) in baking. My kids like to “lick the bowl” and since you never know when or if an egg is contaminated, it’s always a good idea to make sure that raw egg consumption is just not a possibility in your kitchen.

    The only difference I note between pasteurized eggs in home cooking is that most pasteurized egg whites will NOT take on enough air to make meringue.

  • Eileen
    August 24, 2010

    As the mom of a child allergic to eggs, THANK YOU!! Following a soda bread recipe that used buttermilk, I started to look for naturally egg free recipes and your links–plus the substitution ideas–are very welcome. (I’ve used baking powder with liquid as a substitute, but you can taste the extra baking powder; it often comes out bitter).

  • Meg
    August 24, 2010

    I would just recommend buying eggs locally. Where I live it is easy to buy eggs at any small farm in the area. That way big recalls won’t affect your food.

  • Linda
    August 24, 2010

    Barring some company owner like the guy who created this mess, most companies are responsible and bad eggs are generally 1 in 20,000 and most of the bad egg problems occur in restaurants where egg handling is the poorest. But someone intentionally doing business badly–he should have to eat his own eggs for the rest of his life.

    I am making your Melt-in-Your-Mouth-Chocolate-Buttermilk Cookies and realized they have no eggs. Thought you might want to add that one to the list. And a great recipe it is too!!

  • Esther
    August 24, 2010

    thanks for your informative paragraph. (sorry, didn’t know a better way to word it) I happen to be one of those people who used almost all of the eggs in the carton before finding out that it was recalled. Luckily, my mom was able to get a refund. 🙂 But before that, I was worried that people would get sick because of me. Why? Because I made some cookies, and whatnot and gave them to my friends before knowing about the egg recall. Whewf…

  • Angela
    August 25, 2010

    I discovered a trick a few years ago on another blog-you can use one heaping tbs soy flour mixed with one tbs water to replace one egg. I used it many times, and while it smelled funny before it was cooked, it always worked perfectly! and the smell goes away 🙂

  • ellie
    September 6, 2013

    i have baked without eggs before and it turned out really well so i am not even going to ever again bake with eggs it taste so much better without them

  • sarah
    September 6, 2013

    just cooked cookies with my sister with out eggs and they were sooooooooooo good

  • isha
    July 1, 2014

    thanks a lot for this very informative writing!! i do baking from home but most of it is with eggs. can you please help me out with some more eggless cake recipes..i really need to get some good eggless cake recipes. Also i wanted to know about the egg replacers..if the recipe demands more than 1 egg, can we increase the quantity of corn starch or it won’t work well that way..thanks!!

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