Delicious Vegan Baking for All Levels

Vegan baking is easy. You don't have to get a special cookbook or buy any weird ingredients to make delicious vegan cookies, muffins, brownies, breads, or cakes (although you can if you want, of course). You can just take any old non-vegan recipe and use the following substitutions:
If the recipe calls for...

• 1 egg: replace with 1-4 tbsp applesauce (depending on sweetness of recipe), or 1 tbsp ground flax seeds mixed with 1/4 cup water, or 1/2 large banana, or 2 tbsp cornstarch, or (if the baked good is supposed to be light and fluffy) 1/4 cup soy milk with 1 tbsp lemon juice. If the recipe calls for more eggs, just use more of the replacing ingredient. Sometimes, you can even get away with just omitting the eggs with no replacement, depending on the recipe.
• milk: replace with soy milk, almond milk, or another kind of non-dairy milk. (If the recipe calls for 2% milk, you should probably make sure your non-dairy milk contains fat, which will make it more creamy.)
• honey: replace with agave nectar, maple syrup, date syrup, brown rice syrup, or golden syrup. Keep in mind that some maple syrups made by small producers may have been processed using bacon strips hanging over the pot, which prevents frothing while the syrup is being boiled.
• butter or margarine: replace with vegan margarine (not all margarines are vegan!) (Earth Balance is one company that provides 100% vegan products, including margarines. Becel also provides a vegan margarine option at many stores, including my local grocery stores.)

For more comprehensive information, you can visit The Vegan Wolf website, http://www.veganwolf.com/vegan_cooking_substitutions.htm, or Savvy Vegetarian, http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetarian-cooking/vegan-baking-substitutions.php. The latter contains a lot of info on the best ways to replace eggs in recipes.
If you'd like special vegan cookbooks, never fear! There are loads of awesome vegan cookbooks out there. For example, you could get the vegan cookbook Veganomicon, which contains recipes for yourself on a casual day and for special days when company comes over. There are many more cookbooks, too. Look around!
Online, you can head over to the following websites:

• VegWeb: www.vegweb.com
• The Vegan Chef: http://veganchef.com/
• Fatfree Vegan: http://fatfreevegan.com/
• Gone Raw: http://www.goneraw.com/
• The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur: http://thevegancookieconnoisseur.com/

Photo Courtesy of The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur (see link above)

Until next week!