How to Make Pancakes Without Eggs

pancakes Feb 24, 2022

All you need to know to prepare delicious vegan pancakes for Shrove Tuesday

Raise your hand if you’re looking forward to Shrove Tuesday because you love eating pancakes.

Sweet or savoury, fluffy or thin, they’re just so yummy in all their shapes and sizes!

But the only thing is that you’ve always been told that eggs are essential to make pancakes, so what can you do now if you don’t eat them anymore?

Well, you’ll be really happy to know that you can actually make delicious pancakes without using eggs at all!

Eggs mostly play the role of binding and raising agents in pastry cooking, but the same role can also be played by several other ingredients, including many plant-based ones.

Would you like to discover which ingredients you can use to replace eggs?

Let’s go through some of the most common ones.

How to replace eggs in your favourite pancake recipes

There are many plant-based ingredients that you can use to replace eggs in your favourite pancake recipes.

Here are some options that will work really well both as binding and raising agents and will make your pancakes nice and moist:

1. Mashed bananas

Mashed bananas are obviously a great way to replace eggs in banana pancakes.

Just make sure you use very ripe bananas as they will be easier to mash and will also make your pancakes sweeter and tastier without adding sugar.

2. Fruit purees, like apple sauce

Fruit purees such as apple sauce are great options to replace eggs and add some natural sweetness to your pancakes.

“Hiding” fruit purees in the pancake is also a popular trick to get picky eaters who don’t like fruit to eat more of it (they won’t notice, promise!).

3. Sweet pumpkin puree

The puree of steamed or boiled sweet pumpkin will help you add flavour, sweetness, fluffiness and nutrients to your pancakes.

And it’s another great hack to get picky eaters to eat more veggies.

4. Flaxseeds

You can create a “flax egg” by combining a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds with 4-5 tbsps. of water. Stir a couple of times, set aside for 5 minutes and the “egg” is ready.

1 tbsp. of flax seeds replaces 1 egg.

5. Chia seeds

You can also use chia seeds as an alternative to flaxseeds and in this case you won’t have to grind them, as chia seeds can be used whole.

6. Starch, such as tapioca flour or potato starch

To make your pancakes fluffier, you can replace 20-40% of the flour with a starch such as tapioca, arrowroot flour or potato starch.

7. Egg replacer

A quick and easy option is to use a commercial egg replacer and follow the instructions on the packet.

Egg replacers are now commonly found in most supermarkets and health shops and are generally reasonably priced.

Which type of pancake are you going to prepare?

Now that you know how to replace eggs, the next step is to choose which type of pancake you’d like to cook on Shrove Tuesday!

Here are some ideas of vegan pancakes you can easily prepare at home.

American pancakes

To make fluffy American pancakes, you should use flour, a starch (such as potato starch), baking powder and soy or almond milk.

Combine all the ingredients together and cook your pancakes (with oil) as usual.

If you’d like to make banana pancakes, replace some of the milk with mashed bananas. Any other fruit or sweet pumpkin puree will work well too.

A more nutritious (but less fluffy) version would be to replace normal flour with chickpea or wholemeal flour. The pancakes can be sweet or savoury.

Garnish your sweet pancakes with fruits such as berries or bananas and maple syrup and your savoury ones with guacamole or with a tomato and basil salad.

Crepes

To make vegan crepes, you can use the same batter as the one for American pancakes but it should be more liquid and less thick (as crepes are thinner).

You can have your crepes with sugar and orange juice, with pear and melted dark chocolate or with strawberries, mint, lemon juice and sugar.

Another idea is to eat them with some “Veganella”, which you can easily prepare at home by combining hazelnut paste, cocoa, sugar and almond milk.

Galette

French savoury galette (galette bretonne or galette de sarrasin) is a savoury type of crepe made from wholemeal buckwheat flour.

The traditional recipe includes eggs, but you can make a plant-based version of it by combining wholemeal buckwheat flour, salt and water.

Traditionally it’s filled with ham and cheese, but you can eat it with a delicious vegan filling, such as: sautéed leek and potatoes; scrambled tofu, spinach and nutmeg; or sautéed kale, mushrooms and garlic.

Welsh cakes

It’s very easy to “veganise” Welsh cakes as you can simply replace butter with vegan butter/margarine and eggs with plant-based milk such as soy milk.

The remaining ingredients are the classic ones: self-raising flour, spices, sugar and dried fruit such as sultanas or currants.

So, now you’re spoilt for choice… which type of pancake will you be making on Tuesday?