You can adjust a recipe to use dairy-free ingredients
Dairy-Free Muffins
 Carrot Spice Muffins |
 Coffee Break Muffins |
 Strawberry Banana Muffins |
Vegan Muffins
 Lemon Muffins |
 Sun-Dried Tomato Herb |
 Peanut Butter Muffins |
Intolerance to milk is much more common than a serious allergy, yet many people suffer from a mild intolerance that can cause, well, gastrointestinal issues…
The good news? It’s very easy to replace dairy in common baked goods, and even better, you won’t even notice the difference! Pick the right recipes to use as a base, experiment with substitutions at least a few times (and carefully record the changes you’ve made!), and know what to substitute.
A Dairy-Free Baking Experiment
We picked three of our favorite muffin recipes as a base, ensuring that each recipe contained only one dairy ingredient. Each recipe required a simple one-step substitution that changed the rest of the recipe only slightly or not at all.
We love Earth Balance Buttery Sticks because they behave just like butter and have a lovely butter flavor. When you substitute them, drop the salt in the recipe by half if you are replacing unsalted butter.
If your recipe calls for milk, choose rice milk or soy milk with a similar fat content to what you are replacing. These beverages come in many varieties that approximate everything from skim to whole. For recipes that call for 1 cup of milk or less (which is most of them), consider a juice box-sized container. There’s little waste if you don’t drink the rest, and you can stock up and store them in your pantry. It’s usually safe to stick with unflavored varieties, as recipes call for their own vanilla flavoring.
A Vegan Baking Experiment
After our successful dairy-free trial, we decided to try vegan. Enter the Ener G Egg Substitute. We were pleasantly surprised with the results – delicious muffins that didn’t miss the eggs or dairy. For this round, we chose things that had more dairy – sundried tomato basil muffins, and lemon. The tomato muffins required us to find a vegan parmesan cheese substitute while for the lemon muffins we used Tofutti’s Sour Surpreme. Both worked beautifully in the recipes. Any of the dairy-free muffins can go totally Vegan with a quick egg substitute.
What to substitute?
Are you wondering what to substitute? Use our quick chart as a guide, and have fun experimenting! When you find success, share your recipe on the site! For an expanded list of substitutions, see godairyfree.org.
| Original Ingredient | Substitute Ingredient |
| Butter | Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks |
| Sour Cream | Tofutti Plain Sour Supreme |
| Milk | Rice Milk or Soy Milk |
| Buttermilk | 1 cup Soy Milk + 1 tablespoon Lemon Juice |
| Egg | Ener G Egg Substitute |
Tags: dairy-free, vegan
More about Amy and Scott Dawson, creators of Lunchtaker.com: One of our core focuses is on nutrition and fitness. Our children both attended a parent cooperative pre-school where the morning snack was as healthy as possible, and our family liked the opportunities for new foods that arose in pre-school. As our children go through grade school, we are focusing on continuing the trend of ensuring we feed ourselves a variety of foods, all good for our bodies... read more...
Posted Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 8:35 am and filed under How-To, Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
When you find the measurements, definitely share! That sounds like a great substitution to try. Thanks.
So much great info! I just recently found out you can substitute eggs with ground flaxseed and a little water. I don’t have the exact measurements with me at the moment. I’m planning to use it next time I make muffins as a healthy, natural, vegan trade.
Your site is full of great info. I’m going to dig around for a while.