The Eggless Adventures

My Dear Reader,

I'm not exactly one of those girls that is into all of those girly Mormon-ey crafty things. You know, like scrapbooking, sewing, cross stitching, cleaning, and the like. Mind you, I admire those who are skilled in these areas, but I have never really cared to be one of them. But there is one thing that I love to do which is equal parts Mormon and feminine, and that is baking. I just love to bake! I bake cakes and cookies, as well as the occasional non-cake-or-cookie item, and I do it all from scratch. Trust me; it's a lot more fun that way.

I think that this love for baking stems from my early childhood when I would pull on my Madre's apron and as her if I could help her in the kitchen. Normally, she would ask me to do one of two things: cut the onions or make the dessert.* Sufficed to say, however, I wasn't entirely enthused about chopping onions, and I was very excited about whatever contained sugar. As a result, I baked a lot as a young girl, and my two sisters did as well. Never in my life did I feel more grown up than when I was baking things, and I imagined myself one day becoming the master chef that my Madre is.

At the same time, I was growing up in a family that sees baked goods as a form of love. Some of my happiest memories as a child was when my two sisters, Madre, and I would spend hours in the kitchen making Rice Krispy Treat bears for the neighbors. We did it mostly at Christmas, but sometimes we would do it without an occasion. It would take all day, and as fun as it was to pour the ingredients, stir the pots, and fill the bear molds, the absolute best part was giving plates upon plates away to the neighbors.** Spending that much time together pooling our talents for the benefit of others taught me a lot about life, love, and service. It also forever burned into my brain the idea that baking could bring people together, that it was essentially a communal activity. It also turned into a foolproof way for me to express affection for others.

Knowing all of this, I bet that you can imagine, Dear Reader, how I felt when I found out that my roommate has a severe allergy to eggs, the prime ingredient in most baking endeavors. It also shows up in he randomest things, like noodles and mayonnaise, meaning that she has to be very careful about everything she puts in her mouth. What a tragedy! Sufficed to say, I knew that something had to be done. So for the past month or so, I've been trying to figure out how to bake things for my roommate that wouldn't make her throw up repeatedly. It was quite the challenge. Luckily for me, I work in a cafeteria that keeps a dietitian on staff who is in charge of feeding people with food allergies. She gave me the key to helping my friend out: Egg Replacer. It's this compound or other that, you guessed it, replaces eggs. My roommate (who, for the sake of clarity, we will refer to as Eggless) was pretty excited when I told her about it. We made a special trip to a health food store in order to purchase it, and directly afterwards we tried to make the one thing that Eggless craved most: waffles. I'm a pretty big fan of waffles myself, so I was eager to see how this mystery substance worked out. We borrowed a waffle maker from a friend and just used the recipe inside the box, making the necessary adjustments. To my great surprise, the waffles turned out really well, and we spent the entire night stuffing our faces with all of the waffles we could cram down our gullets. It was a wonderful experience, the best part being that neither of us threw up. It was like magic!

I was so excited, in fact, that I wanted to see how Egg Replacer worked in other recipes. We decided that our next project would be cream puffs, since they are fairly easy to make, require few ingredients, and impress the socks off of most people. We put everything in the dough except for the eggs, and then divided the dough into two equal parts: one with eggs and one with the mysterious egg-like substance. The results were fairly interesting. The eggful batch turned out marvelously, while the eggless batch didn't turn into cream puffs no matter how hard we tried. Instead of rising into tiny spheres, the balls of dough we put on the baking sheet turned into really, really, hard balls of dough. Eggless nuggets, if you will. The best part was that they were this oddest shade of yellow. I was kind of glad that Eggless suggested that we do a regular batch at that point, because at least we had something to show for our efforts, even if they couldn't be enjoyed by all.

I also tried some recipes that didn't require eggs at all: one for brownies, and one for cake. The former was a butterscotch brownie recipe I got from a cookbook, and though we were ever so excited to try it, we couldn't make it work. We tried twice to make those brownies, and both times we ended up with mush-in-a-pan. It wasn't until the next day that we realized that the first time I'd unwittingly neglected to put in half of the flour mixture into the liquid mixture, and that on the second batch, Eggless had put in baking soda instead of baking powder. Oh well. Our next attempt was a cake, the most challenging of all. Fortunately, however, I found a recipe for vegan cake online. Those clever vegans! I swear, they are the best friends of those who have food allergies. I'm pretty sure that they could figure out how to make a deliciously moist cake out of rocks and Play-Doh. I'd tried to make a vegan cake before for a vegan friend-of-a-sister with limited sucess. The trick is that instead of using the eggs to make the cake rise, you rely on the old fashioned chemical reacion between baking soda and vinegar. And finally, after ten to fifteen years, those elemenatary school science fairs actually came in handy. The cake was a huge hit, and by that I mean I could hardly get people to stop eating it long enough to take a picture of it.

Doesn't it look normal?

So yes, I am pretty darn Mormon-ey sometimes. House wife-y, even. And even though I've had limited success with my eggless baking endeavors thus far, I'm determined to continue. In fact, I've been thinking of adding a verse to the famous Primary song that goes something like this:


If eggs make you throw up and get hives
Some people make you mayonnaise pies
But I won't! I won't!
If you don't digest like most people do
Some people will not bake for you
But I will! I will!

I'll eat waffles with you

Bake cakes for you,

That's how I'll show my love for you!

After all, that's exacly what my dear Madre taught me to do.

Regards, best wishes, and hivelessness,

-Cecily Jane

* As I grew up, I realized how smart my Madre was for doing this, after all, she could either get the inexperienced helper to either do the most loathsome task (cutting those onions), or to be in charge of the least important menu item (the dessert). That way, it didn't matter if I did the best job possible, because at least one more thing was out of the way. It was genius, really.

**Now, in Utah, they do this all the time. This is because Mormons have to entertain themselves without coffee, tea, tobacco, or alcohol, and therefore have to be very creative. In California, however, this is far from common, which meant that we spent hours of work making these gifts for our neighbors knowing full well that the favor would never be returned. We never really worried about it much, though. We were too busy having the time of our lives.