I Tested Five Cake Egg Substitutes and the Winner Was Clear.
Sure, there’s an issue with egg prices, but whether you’re trying to save money on groceries or have an aversion to eggs due to dietary or medical restrictions, you deserve cake, too. Whether it’s a birthday cake or a cake on a whim, nothing should stop you from achieving your sweet dream at the moment, least of all the lack of eggless cake recipes. I tested five common and affordable egg substitutions to see which makes the best eggless cake.
Dough
I decided to test out a basic yellow cake recipe I’ve used before. It uses a mixture of butter, oil, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla extract and usually eggs. This is a good layered cake because when made as written (with eggs) it makes a firm, even (not domed) vanilla flavored cake. To save time, make multiple batches, and reduce mess, I spooned the batter into muffin paper rather than large muffin pans. The first round of cake was made using an egg as a control.
Substitutions
There are almost too many options for replacing eggs in cake batter, so I focused on the ones I’ve heard of most often: mashed banana, Greek yogurt, applesauce, aquafaba, and a mixture of tapioca flour and baking powder.
Eggs are essential for making batters for cakes and other baked goods because they are a binder, can act as a leavening agent and an emulsifier (they help keep fats and liquids stable and homogenized). They also add structure and moisture to the finished product. Indeed, they are incredible. We’re looking for one ingredient that can do as many things as possible, but it’s important that our expectations are realistic—few other ingredients can do all those things without sacrificing anything .
Results
Let’s get to the good stuff – the results. Here are the best egg substitutes for cake and the worst results.
1. Aquafaba. It’s easy to discard aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas or other beans) until you use it. The cake turned out very tasty, loose, moist and without any foreign flavors. In structure and taste, it was as similar as possible to a pie made from whole eggs. This is also the easiest replacement. If you saved some aquafaba from last night’s dinner (or do what I did and keep it on hand in the freezer ), you simply add three tablespoons of the bean liquid per one whole egg the recipe calls for.
I mixed it at the same stage as the egg, right after the butter and sugar were combined. Note that if your beans were not low in sodium, you may want to reduce the amount of salt in the recipe by a quarter teaspoon.
2. Tapioca flour and baking powder. This easy-to-prepare mixture also resulted in a good quality final product. Points were deducted because the mixture was an extra step and tapioca flour may be harder to source depending on where you live. The cake was fluffier and more delicate than the aquafaba substitute, making it more delicate to handle if you’re stacking multiple layers for a large cake.
Mix one tablespoon of tapioca flour with one tablespoon of cold water. Add a quarter teaspoon of baking powder and it can replace one whole egg in a cake recipe. The mixture will be very runny.
Alternatively, you can simply add additional baking powder to the dry ingredients. Add the tapioca and water mixture to the bowl after mixing the butter and sugar and begin the recipe. You can usually find tapioca flour in the baking section of large supermarkets.
3. Banana. Bananas are a great helper in making batter because they can actually mimic what eggs do: they can bind, add moisture, and their fiber provides structure and can help hold fats and liquids in suspension, just like eggs. Additionally, they are fairly easy to find in any region and in most grocery stores. The finished product is strong and moist, making it easy to handle and decorate. However, bananas give your cake a banana flavor. If you don’t like it, it absolutely stinks.
To use a banana as an egg substitute, mash enough banana to make enough of one quarter cup of banana mixture for one egg.
4. Greek yogurt. I like it when yogurt or sour cream is added to the cake batter because the cake always turns out moist, flavorful and tender. However, this is not a very good egg replacement. Even though the cake tasted delicious, the yogurt didn’t add any structure to it and completely collapsed as it cooled. For context, I used a quarter cup of Greek yogurt instead of one whole egg. The only reason I ranked it above applesauce is because the flavor was delicious, but it would never work for a cake I would serve in public. Imagine if I used an eight or nine inch cake pan. The cake will look like a bowl.
5. Applesauce. Applesauce produces the same emulsifying results as bananas, but without the benefit of a solid texture. In the picture above you can see that after the cake cooled it was dipped into the center. Not as harsh as with yogurt, but still not very good. Applesauce adds moisture, but because it has less structure, the dough collapses as it cools, resulting in a hard center. Also, I found that the apple pie tasted slightly sickly and sweetened my cake too much, even though I used the natural kind with no added sugar. If you must use it, use a quarter cup instead of one egg.
If you want to make cakes and muffins without any extra steps or special ingredients, use aquafaba for best results. It’s vegan, has good texture and moisture, and won’t detract from the flavor of your cake. It doesn’t need to be beaten for recipes that don’t require eggs, but – as an added benefit – it’s the only ingredient you can beat to replace beaten eggs in a recipe. Aquafaba is a versatile cooking aid that you can keep on hand, and it’s practically free if you’ve been draining it from beans all those years ago.