Light + Fluffy Eggless Cake, First Birthday Edition

After much trial and error, we found the absolute best way to replace eggs in any cake recipe. Eggless cake is perfect for first birthday babies with egg allergies, and our technique can also be adapted to be completely vegan.

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My amazing and adorable niece Scarlet recently celebrated her first birthday. Since she was around 5 months, her very protective first-time parents have been slowly introducing solid food into her diet to carefully suss out any allergies. Lo and behold, scrambled eggs had her breaking out in hives. So when her first birthday rolled around, her mom Julie set out to come up with the perfect eggless cake recipe. I didn’t realize how many babies are allergic to eggs. It is among the most common allergies, affecting up to 2.5% of babies. Most children outgrow it by 16, but that’s what makes this recipe perfect for a first birthday. And while our original recipe isn’t vegan, it can easily be adapted for anyone avoiding animal products completely. This cake is so light and fluffy, without any discernible difference in flavor, you’d never know it was eggless.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EGGS IN BAKING

There are a few reasons why eggs are almost always included in baked goods. For the same reason that we add them to meatballs or crab cakes, they act as a binding agent. They bind all your ingredients together, ensuring your cake doesn’t crumble or fall apart. In this same vein, they also add all-important moisture. And egg whites help particularly to leaven, giving cake its signature fluffiness. Plus, eggs add richness without any distinct other flavor. This is what makes and eggless cake so hard to achieve; eggs don’t serve just one purpose in baking. Of course there are lots of egg alternatives out there, and some make an admirable attempt at playing all the rolls that eggs do. We tried a few of them, and some worked better than others.

But none of these replacements quite did the trick on their own. Some added too much other flavor, and others didn’t to the job of leavening. And so without further ado, here’s what we found to be…

This recipe worked like a charm in our eggless cake. The vinegar and baking soda combo does all the heavy lifting in the leavening department, giving you the absolute fluffiest cake. But this really only works to replace 1 egg; any more any you’re bound to get a vinegar aftertaste, and your cake may just rise too much. That’s where the yogurt comes in, 1/4 cup per each egg beyond 1. It is virtually tasteless, and does all the work of adding moisture and binding your ingredients that would usually be accomplished by the egg. Using only yogurt results in a cake that is tasty, but so dense we could barely stomach a whole slice. But when used with the vinegar + baking soda combo, we got a cake that was moist, fluffy, and didn’t have any added flavor.

CONFESSION TIME

We love to cook in my house, but for Scarlet’s birthday we made box cakes. Planning and throwing a one year old’s birthday party (not to mention simply caring for said one year old) takes a lot of time and effort. And box cake is fast, easy and delicious. But if you’re feeling more ambitious, here’s a great recipe for homemade yellow cake mix, and one for chocolate cake. And the brilliant thing is that these techniques for replacing eggs can be used in virtually any cookie, cake or brownie recipe. So whether you have a baby with an egg allergy, are avoiding animal products all together, or simply don’t like using eggs, please try our egg replacement technique. You will not be disappointed in the fluffy, creamy and moist baked goods it produces.