Today was my first experience trying a recipe of my own creation. I attempted to make a sour cream pound cake vegan. Suffice to say it was a disaster! I usually mix things by hand, so I never considered that I might need special equipment for mixing. My mom has an electric hand mixer, but it is small and inexpensive, so when she looked at how much mixing was called for in my recipe, she told me not to use it. She thought the motor might break, but she told me that I could improvise with the food processor. I hadn’t ever heard of using a food processor in that way but tried it anyway. It did not go well.
In all fairness, I’m not sure whether the food processor or the absence of real eggs caused the problems. Part of the recipe said to mix until fluffy…well, I mixed and mixed, but it never really even changed texture. It makes sense that eggs would be needed, but I thought that ground flax seeds would work. Everything I read made it sound like that was the ideal egg replacer for that situation, but I guess not. I made two versions of the cake, one with a commercial sour cream alternative (I used a product called “Sour Supreme” made by Tofutti) and a homemade sour cream alternative that I found a recipe for on this website (http://www.theveggietable.com/recipes/sourcream.html). Tasting the two cakes right out of the oven, neither tastes quite like the sour cream pound cake I know and love, but both taste good to me. I think I like the version with homemade “sour cream” better. Tomorrow I am taking both cakes to school to see which version my classmates like better.
All in all, it took me about four hours to make two cakes, including time spent cleaning up. I am sure it should not have taken so long. I can’t imagine what a bakery would do if it took them four hours to make two cakes. That’s just ridicules. I still need to make a short survey for tasters to fill out tomorrow at school, then I am looking forward to going to sleep. What an exhausting experience!
I've never heard of using flax seeds as egg replacer! I know this advice is past being useful, but I usually use banana or a powder called Egg Replacer (how original) that you mix with water and it works really, really well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice. I was using flax seed in an effort to use as few artificial ingredients as possible, an attempt slightly negated by the margarine I used. I do think a commercial egg replacer would work as well or better, though. I have used a product called EnerG with success in other recipes, but I have also used flax seed successfully.
ReplyDeleteI think this recipe might have needed more of an egg-like structural element. I'm not sure how it could be replaced, but is seems like a thickening agent like corn starch (or perhaps something milder) might have helped. I'm not sure; I would have to experiment more.