With supermarket shelves laid bare and egg supplies squeezed by a combination of avian flu and spiralling production costs, finding a box of fresh eggs is now rarer than hens’ teeth.
So what are the alternatives? We tried out a range of egg-cellent substitutes, including a World War II-inspired recipe for eggless pancakes, applesauce blondies and tofu-swirled chocolate mousse.
Using a clutch of ingredients across seven different recipes, we work out the stand-out alternatives to eggs, from the cracking to the downright oeuf-ul…
Eggless pancakes
Lifted straight from an old World War II recipe, when eggs were rationed to one a week per person to ensure the whole population stayed fed, these eggless pancakes use kitchen cupboard staples to create a quick hot meal for the family.
The wartime recipe calls for four tablespoons of flour, a pinch of salt and sugar, then milk and water in place of egg to bind the mixture. Staying with tradition, I hand-whisked the ingredients together and used lard to grease the frying pan, waiting for the fat to get smoking hot before tilting the liquid in a little at a time. Unlike eggy pancakes, these took a lot longer to cook through, and they didn’t puff up as much as you would expect.
The result was thinner, smaller pancakes, but they tasted a lot better than they looked. If you use vegetable shortening instead of lard, it’s not a bad vegan recipe for Pancake Day next month (Feb 21). For authenticity, serve with jam, golden syrup or a squeeze of lemon.
VERDICT : 2.5/5 - egg-xactly average
Scrambled powdered egg
Inspired by another World War II hack, powdered egg in 2023 is nearly as hard to track down as the real thing. I finally found some Free and Easy Egg Replacer with the help of three deeply puzzled supermarket workers, and promptly cracked on.
A teaspoon of the powder can be mixed with two tablespoons of water to recreate a single egg, or you can play around with the proportions if you need a stand-in for either egg yolk or white.
Once I’d whipped mine up into a sort of jellyish paste, I melted a knob of butter in the frying pan and scraped in the concoction. Usually scrambled eggs call for milk, lots of butter and seasoning, but in the name of science I wanted to see what happened to the consistency when heat was applied. Turns out that was a terrible mistake, because the sad paste in the pan soon resembled some sort of dead sea creature that had been dredged up from the depths.
I gamely added salt and pepper to give it a taste, but quickly regretted it when it managed to be both lava-hot and also congealed. Powdered egg might be more suited to bakes, but it’ll never replace real eggs on the breakfast table.
VERDICT : 0/5 - absolutely rotten
Omelette with Crack’d
A vegan alternative to eggs made from water and pea protein, Crack’d comes in liquid form, making it oh-so simple to pour into a pan as you would for a normal omelette. However, it moves in a strange way, forming a puddle that holds together as you slide it around the pan.
Being yellow already it was harder to tell when it was cooked, so I gave it a minute and plated up when I thought it was done. It does smell distinctly pea-like when raw, and tasted similar. But it tends to take on the flavour of whatever you season it with, so you could add mature cheddar, some onions and lean meat for a low-cholesterol alternative to real eggs.
VERDICT : 3/5 - nearly cracked it
Tofu chocolate mousse
Hands (or wings) down, this was the simplest recipe of the lot - and looked like I’d spent hours creating it when it took less than five minutes of prep.
Silken tofu is supposed to be a decent stand-in for eggs, so I got hold of a block of Tofoo Silken Tofu, drained the liquid, and plonked it in a blender with 200g of melted dark chocolate. After whizzing it together I added a couple of tablespoons of maple syrup then gave it another quick blitz. When the mixture started getting those telltale moussey air bubbles, I spooned it into a ramekin and popped it in the fridge for an hour.
It tasted indulgent, chocolatey and very moreish - if a little grainier than expected. I would definitely use the recipe again, perhaps adding some orange essence for more of a kick.
VERDICT : 4/5 - clucking marvellous
Meringue with chickpea water
Aquafaba - the liquid from chickpeas - has long been touted as an eggsellent alternative to egg white as it holds its shape in a similar way when whipped.
I drained a 400g tin of chickpeas, set aside the legumes and poured the water into a food mixer. After a good ten minutes of heavy-duty whisking, the aquafaba was starting to hold its shape in soft white peaks, so I added 100g of golden caster sugar a little at a time until the mixture was glossy and smooth.
Feeling very proud - my real meringue mixture always goes horribly wrong - I gleefully spooned it onto greaseproof paper and slid the mini-meringues into the oven for an hour and 15 minutes at 110C.
But disaster struck when I opened the oven to find precisely zero of my promising little fluffy clouds had risen, leaving splodges of sad flat discs that were essentially glued down to the paper and couldn’t even be sampled. I fear I have been cursed by the meringue gods.
VERDICT 1/5 - repre-hen-sible
Vanilla cookies
Is there anything the mighty chickpea can’t do? Gram flour, made from the same protein-packed balls that give us aquafaba (so naturally gluten free), can also be used as an alternative to egg, so I gave it a go in a simple cookie recipe.
I combined 100g butter, 100g caster sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, 200g plain flour, pinch of salt and a heaped tablespoon of gram flour in the mixer, added a splash of milk to loosen the dough, then dropped spoonfuls of mixture onto a greased baking sheet and gave the cookies ten quick minutes at 180C.
I’m sorry to say there was a theme developing at this point, and all the individual cookies had collapsed into one giant mega-biscuit by the time they were done baking. Undeterred, I threw some cheery colourful sprinkles over the top and decided, if questioned, that the plan had been to make a single comically large cookie all along.
Although flat, the biscuit was sweet with a pleasant crunchy bite to it, a bit like a flapjack.
VERDICT : 4/5 - think I’m cracking up
WINNER Apple sauce blondies
These blondies - like a brownie but without the cocoa powder - don’t take long to make at all, with total prep time lasting about ten minutes. Mix 225g cooled melted butter with 340g brown sugar, then in goes 130g of apple sauce - the equivalent of two eggs - followed by 285g plain flour and 100g of white chocolate chips.
Poured into a square cake tin, the mixture bakes for about 25 minutes at 180C and comes out when the surface has a golden crust with a slight crackle over it. They tasted squidgy and sweet - you can add a pinch of salt to the mixture before baking to tone down the sweetness - and the addition of apple sauce made them moist and moreish.
VERDICT : 5/5 - eggsquisite
Have you tried cooking with egg substitutes? Let us know how you got on in the comments below.
