Vegan Vanilla Cake

This post is about two vegan vanilla cake recipes and their comparison..

What is the role of egg in cakes????
Answer to this question is not one but a few.
Egg is a great binder. Ex: All cakes
Egg can act as a leaven er. Ex: Sponge cake and many others
Egg can give volume to the cake. Ex: Angel food cakes, Chiffon cakes
Egg gives richness to the cake which keeps it moist. Ex: Pound cake, fruit cake and many other cakes.
Perhaps the most difficult challenge for a person to convert a recipe to an eggless recipe or a vegan one is to figure out what exactly is egg's role in a particular recipe.

Other ingredients can be substituted very easily but not egg. If the recipe calls for one or two eggs it is not that hard. When you are talking about beating the egg whites to stiff peaks to create volume, I doubt that any substitute will work in its place. I am not an expert and everyone is entitled to different opinions based on their observations and experience. So, don't quote me on this.

When I posted the 'Almond Date Cake' recipe few days back which is an almost vegan cake except for the glaze, Priya who writes a vegan blog asked me if I had any recipe for a vegan vanilla cake which doesn't use vinegar and used oil instead of vegan butter. That prompted me to do this experiment and post the results.

Since I like decorating cakes, it is very important for me for the cake to not only taste good but have a very good crumb structure. It is very important for the cake to have a very good binding if you want to tart it or carve it. I have baked many cakes without eggs, but I have never baked a cake as an eggless one and decorated that except for once. I was so careful with it that I leveled it with icing rather than torting it. These eggless cakes crumble very easily and they dry out quickly too. They are great in a cupcake form though.

I baked two cakes. One with applesauce in it and the other with homemade egg substitute using corn starch. I chose a recipe which had only one egg for me to replace. And I did not use ener-G egg replacer since it is not available all over the world. If you live in a country where you cannot get applesauce, check out my post on how to make it here.

One year Back: Barley Dosa, Peanut butter cornmeal cookies, Spiced Peanuts
Cake with applesauce:
Makes 1 8" round cake not very high
Ingredients:
All purpose flour - 11/3 cups
Sugar - 3/4 cup
applesauce - 1/2 cup measured in dry measuring cup
Baking Soda - 3/4 tsp
Baking powder - 1/4 tsp
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Oil - 1/4 cup
Vanilla - 1 tsp
Hot water - 3/4 cup (You could use hot soy milk)

Method:
Grease and flour a 8" round pan. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
In a bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar. Set aside. In another bowl whisk together applesauce, hot water, oil and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients to dry and mix gently taking care not to over mix. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 25 - 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Taste:
This tasted great and was very moist. But, because of the use of applesauce, it has a dense crumb texture which is alright if the main thing you are looking for is a piece of moist cake. But, if you want a spongy or airy cake, this is not for you. Also, it has a slight hint of applesauce taste in it. When I tweaked the recipe, I added 1/4 tsp of baking powder to compensate for the denseness the applesauce would bring. I should have increased the baking soda to 1 tsp instead. Because of this, the crust was a little chewy. All in all, a very good recipe since it doesn't call for any fancy ingredient that is available only in certain countries.


Cake with egg replacer:
Makes one 8" square cake
Ingredients:
All purpose flour - 1 1/2 cups
Sugar - 1 cup
Baking powder - 1 tsp (See the Taste section)
Baking Soda - 1 tsp
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Hot water - 1 cup (You could use hot soy milk)
Oil - 1/4 cup (See the Taste section)
Vanilla - 1 tsp
In place of egg - 2 TBSP of corn starch + 1 tsp of oil + 2 TBSP of warm water

Method:
Grease and flour a 8" square pan. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 F. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt. Set aside. In another bowl whisk together hot water, oil and vanilla. Take the contents mentioned in 'In place of egg' (corn starch, oil and warm water) and whisk them together with a fork till well combined. Pour this to the bowl containing liquid ingredients. Whisk them together. Pour the entire liquid into the bowl containing dry ingredients and mix well but don't over mix. Pour it on to the prepared pan and bake for 30 - 35 minutes or till a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Taste:
This tasted like a vanilla cake. But, line the cake pan with parchment paper. Cake stuck to the pan and I couldn't get it out in one piece. If you are looking for an airy, spongy vanilla cake which is vegan and uses oil and does not use vinegar, this is definitely for you. But my suggestion would be to omit baking powder and increase the baking soda to 1 1/2 tsp. Also, instead of 1/4 cup of oil, it would be better to use 1/3 cup. Apart from the disaster of cake sticking to the pan, this one would be a winner as a Vegan vanilla cake. But will I bake it to decorate? probably not since even when not so crumbly, this definitely couldn't hold to torting or carving.

Here is a picture of two cakes side by side to show the crumb. Left one is the one with applesauce and the right one is with corn starch as egg substitute. Applesauce definitely has made the cake come out darker but between the two, that was the sturdier cake.

Update: I had suggested to omit baking powder and increase baking soda to 1 1/2 tsp in the cake recipe which uses corn starch. Even when I had no problems with this cake, some people found it bitter in taste in some places. It could be due to old baking soda or under mixing. I would suggest to keep the recipe as is or reduce the baking powder to 1/2 tsp and keep the remaining as is.
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