If you're just getting started with vegan baking, you've come to the right place! As a vegan for 12 years, and now the owner of an award-winning vegan bakery, I'm on a mission to share vegan baking tips and take the mystery out of vegan baking.
Here's my top 10 tips for anyone getting started with baking without eggs and dairy.
When I was a beginner vegan baker, I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea how to bake without dairy and eggs.
Maybe that's how you're feeling right now. You might be trying to figure out why your vegan cookies don't taste good, why your vegan cake is dry, or why that one vegan recipe didn't work.
That used to be me! I made so many mistakes when I first started vegan baking and now I share all I know so you don't have to go through half of those mistakes yourself.
I've put together my top vegan baking tips for you covering all the vegan baking basics. It's all the advice and vegan baking hacks I wish I had when I started out. Make sure you bookmark this page so you can come back to these tips later, too!
Top Vegan Baking Tips For Beginners
Skip the Flavored Non-Dairy Milks
One of my biggest vegan baking tips is: don't use flavored non-dairy milk. When baking without milk, you need to pick the right dairy-free milk that will work in your vegan recipe. That means skipping the vanilla-flavored non-dairy milk, and going for the unsweetened, unflavored version.
Check Ingredient Labels
Another piece of advice for beginner vegan bakers is to always check the labels on ingredients. When dairy-free baking, you want to be careful about items that have sneaky milk ingredients in them.
Don't Bake Your Favorites
The third, and probably the most important, vegan baking tip you need to know is: don't bake your favorite recipes — at least not right away. It's harder than you think to take a recipe with dairy in it and veganize it, and it usually ends in disappointment. You can get to that level if you keep practicing, but let's start simple!
On my YouTube channel, I explain all these vegan baking tips in more detail (including a hack for making the ingredient buying so much easier and faster). You can watch my top vegan baking tips here.
Understand the Whys of Vegan Baking
The next vegan baking tip that really helped me become an expert vegan baker is understanding the whys of vegan baking. I realized that baking is just chemistry, and it's crucial to understand how ingredients interact in your recipe.
For example, you want to figure out why that cake recipe has eggs in it. What is the purpose and function of that egg in this recipe? How does it react with other ingredients? Once you have those answers, you can figure out the best way to replace that egg to make a vegan cake.
Here's some more info on how to replace eggs in a vegan baking recipe.
Don't Sub One for One
One of the biggest vegan baking mistakes is subbing one for one with ingredients. For instance, if a recipe calls for three eggs and you use three flax eggs to make it vegan.
Instead, you first need to ask yourself why the ingredient is there in the first place. And then, ask: will the vegan alternative do that same job? Or do you need to add another ingredient to get the necessary reaction? It all depends on the specific recipe.
Only Trust Actual Vegan Baking Experts
One of the first places you probably went to for vegan baking advice is Google. Unfortunately, many of the search results are from people who are not actually experts, because they're not vegan bakers. They may be very skilled at baking with dairy and eggs, but vegan baking is a whole different thing.
You want to get your vegan baking advice from someone who actually knows what they're talking about... and yes, I'm one of those people ;)
Test Vegan Baking Alternatives
The best way to know what the best vegan alternatives are for baking is to test them. Getting good at vegan baking takes practice.
Thankfully, I've done a lot of that work for you already and tried the best (and worst) ingredients on my YouTube channel. That's also where you can find the top lessons that took me from zero to an award-winning vegan baker, watch here.
I've got a lot more videos and tips to help you become a better vegan baker! I've put together an entire playlist focused on vegan baking for beginners. It's got everything you need to know if you're just starting with vegan baking. Check it out here!
Make sure to save this playlist, because it has so many helpful videos to guide you through vegan baking. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel to see my newest videos, because I share more vegan baking tips and hacks every week!
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