Egg Substitutes

You're in the middle of baking and realize you don't have the eggs you need. You could run to the store, but that takes time and gas, plus, if you're like me everytime you run to the store you pick up more things than you meant to buy, and even if they are on sale that's money you would not have spent otherwise.

For pancakes you can substitute cottage cheese, which is only more frugal if it saves you that trip to the store and you needed to use up the cottage cheese. But it actually tastes pretty good.

Here are some substitutions:
1 tsp cornstarch plus 1/4 cup water, combine first (this is for one egg)
or just use 2 Tablespoons cornstarch right into the dry ingredients of the recipe for each egg.
2 tablespoons arrowroot flour, same as above
in cake recipes you can mash up one banana for each egg, but this will change the flavor.

Now I can't use most of those if the Cherub is going to eat it, because she can't eat eggs.

WE use this flax seed substitute for the eggs:

Grind about 2 Tablespoons of flax seed (your coffee mill will work, and you can try your blender. You should have about 1/4 cup of ground flaxseed. Whisk this into 3/4 cups of cold water and continue whisking while you bring the mixture to a boil and boil it for three minutes longer.

The texture will resemble egg white with flecks of seed in it.

You want about 1/8 of a cup for each egg in a recipe, but precise measurements are not important. I just add this entire batch to the wet ingredients (the creamed butter and sugar) of the pound cake recipe instead of eggs.

It keeps in the fridge for about two weeks if you want to make it up for a different recipe. Flaxseed egg substitute binds like eggs, but it won't, of course, add the lightness that real eggs would. That doesn't matter for a poundcake- a poundcake is supposed to be dense, heavy, rich, and sweet. But I wouldn't try to make a light white cake with this.

That recipe came from More Than Breakfasts, by Sue Gregg. Sue Gregg's cookbooks are very popular among many homeschoolers and women who are trying to improve the nutrition level of their cooking. In some cases I think they are overpriced and the information in most of them was not new to me. They would be helpful for beginners, and I've still got my eye on the Main Dishes cookbook and the Master Index the curriculum materials look nice, too)- however, for the time being we're doing without them. But, and I say this emphatically, but the Breakfast cookbook is more than worth its price. It is unique, comprehensive, and it is one of the ten or so cookbooks I simply could not manage without. (Amazon does not have it right now, but you can order directly from Sue Gregg at her website).
We have a grainmill and we grind our own wheatberries to make the rye flour for this poundcake, but Sue Gregg's breakfast cookbook includes recipes and information for safely using your blender to grind some whole grains- that will save you the cost of a grain mill and get fresh grains into your diets much more quickly than waiting for the grain mill. Buying our own fresh grains is also cheaper than buying the flours, so I ma able to make up for my tepid response to the other Sue Gregg cookbooks with unstinted, heartfelt, full-blown praise for this one. If you make breakfast instead of pouring it out of a box, this is a most excellent cookbook to own. If you pour your breakfast out of a box then this is a great cookbook to help you escape that money trap. I really like this cookbook (and nobody's paying me to say so and I have no stock in the company, unfortunately).

If you're out of milk, frankly, just about any liquid will do in most recipes (especially baked goods). Seriously. The flavor will vary accordingly, milk will be richer than water, but you can fiddle with other ingredients to make up for that.

And if you're out of sour cream- well, then, try this.