Posts about notes

Little Note re Vegan Egg Substitutes

Most “egg substitutes” only work well for a specific use case of eggs, and not for others. E.g:

  • Aquafaba (chick pea water) whips up like egg whites and can be used to make sponge cakes, merengues or similar fluffy sweets.

  • Chia or flaxseed/linseed are a good replacement binder for muffins and denser cakes (and good for fibre and protein too).

  • Tapioca starch and baking powder can also work to give a bit of leavening for muffins (McKensie brand vegan baking egg subtitute is this).

  • Ground cashews and/or avocado can be used for some richer desserts like mousses.

  • Kala Namak, a dark sulphurous salt which adds the smell and flavour of egg yolk, but doesn’t add texture like the above stuff.

  • Tumeric is often used to add a bit of yellow colour to make vegan omelettes and scrambles look like eggs.

I haven’t yet seen any subsitutes that are a straight drop in for all purposes of eggs, usually you have to use several depending on the recipe.

The Delightful Diversity of “Cup” Sizes in UK/US/AU/NZ Cooking

Volumetric measurements (using the volume of a container) are inferior to Gravimetric measurements (i.e. weight) in most ways. Weighing is faster (for a given pareto-optimal degree of accuracy), can achieve greater accuracy, and most importantly there will be less dishes to clean up afterwards.

Most irritatingly, “cups” and “spoons” mean different amounts in different countries. Even worse, sometimes three “thirds” of a cup are less than one cup…

[Updated 2020-03-22: Added cup densities for wheat bran and oat bran]

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