These days there are a lot of vegan products on the market, and it can be pretty overwhelming if you aren't familiar with them. Maybe you are doing Veganuary and don’t want to miss out on the goods, or you just want to bake something that is allergen-friendly but don’t know where to begin. I’ve done enough vegan experimenting over the years, so thought I would do a mini series of posts on plant-based swaps for baking. Here we’ll look at all things dairy.
Butter
As with regular butter, you’ve got two kinds on offer - spreadable and block butter. The rule is pretty much the same for dairy versus non-dairy baking and you can make a direct 1:1 substitution – if you would use spreadable butter in the recipe then you can use vegan spread. This tends to only be the case in cake batters (where you might use margarine), or where you are melting the butter such as brownies, cookies or bread dough (though you may need to reduce the amount of liquid you add as these spreads have higher water content).
Mostly in baking though you’ll be wanting to use the solid vegan blocks, particularly where the butter needs to keep the structure - such as buttercream, biscuits, scones, crumble topping and pastries. These blocks act pretty much the same way as normal butter – you’ll often need to soften it slightly to work with it. The only thing that is really missing is the typical buttery flavour; I find where a bake relies on the butter flavour (like in a plain shortbread) you need to add a little of some other flavour (e.g. vanilla extract) or it becomes quite bland.
The other thing that you might want to swap butter for is oil. I tend to avoid this as mostly the recipe creator has chosen one or the other for a reason, and there is a pretty good selection of products on the market, but if you really have to, the general rule of thumb is to use ¾ the amount of oil as you would butter in terms of volume (not weight).
Summary of best products:
Spreads (for cake batters):
Blocks: Flora or Naturli (though this contains nuts)
Milk
Milk is fairly straightforward, and there's a huge number of options on the market, from nut milks to 'semi-skimmed', and branded vs own-label. You can pretty much swap directly to your plant milk of choice and typically it doesn’t really matter which – I don’t tend to find much of a difference between them but prefer using soya or oat to avoid nut allergies. In terms of consistency, I find soya to be thicker than oat, and almond more watery.
If the original recipe calls for whole milk then Alpro does a good ‘This is not milk’ whole milk, or I've also swapped half of the milk for vegan single cream before. I have no real opinion of branded vs own-label - the only thing I'll say is that Alpro lasts ages in the fridge (and longer than the own-label stuff I've tried), but this is purely anecdotal!
Summary of best products:
Nut free: Soya milk
Allergen free: Oat milk
Whole milk: Alpro 'This is not milk' whole milk
Long-life: Alpro products
Yoghurt
As with milk, yoghurt is a simple 1:1 swap. My favourite is Alpro ‘Plain no sugars’ as it doesn’t have any extra sweetness that some of the other yoghurts have (purely from a baking perspective). Own-label (e.g. M&S and Tesco) soya alternatives are also pretty good too, as is the Alpro Plain Yoghurt. Personally I don't use coconut yoghurts as I'm not a fan of the taste.
Summary of best products:
Best all-round for baking: Alpro plain no sugar/ plain
Best own-label: Tesco soya alternative
Cream
Finally, we’ve got cream. Again, a 1:1 swap with your dairy product, whether it be replacing single cream or double/ whippable cream. I’d say double/ whippable cream replacements is where there is more discrepancy between products on the market, and some thicken and taste better than others. You may have to do a little bit of trial and error here to find your favourite – my preference is Elmlea plant based, as I find this most reliable in whipping and prefer the taste, but Oatly whippable is also pretty good. Unfortunately, you might also need to go digging for these, as I don’t always see them in the local shops!
Hopefully this post is somewhat helpful and feel free to message with any questions or other products you've tried.
Comments