Vegan Baking

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For most vegans, the challenge in vegan baking lies in how to replace butter, eggs and milk. But if you're interested in a complete roster of healthy ingredients, then there's more to it than just converting the animal products.

Two of the big ingredients you'll want to replace are white sugar and white flour, neither of which have any nutritional value at all.

I have found white sugar in many vegan baking recipes, which surprises me because it is actually not vegan. In order to make white sugar, the sugar cane is filtered through the charred bones of animals. Yuck!

Even if refined white sugar were vegan, you'd still want to avoid it because ingesting it is like lobbing a grenade at your immune system. And white sugar causes your pancreas to over-secrete insulin, which can eventually lead to diabetes.

To add a final insult to injury, the sucrose in white sugar breaks down in your bloodstream in a way that's very similar to alcohol. In fact, over-consumption of white sugar can actually lead to cirrhosis of the liver.

White flour behaves much like white sugar in your body once it's broken down. To make white flour, the grain is pounded out of the wheat until it is soft enough for baking. The grain contains all the nutrients, so the only things left in the flour are sugars and calories.

Another ingredient that many vegans have questions about is yeast. Because yeast is a living organism, they wonder if it is classified as an animal and therefore to be avoided. Actually, yeast is a single-celled organism related to fungi and is classified by the Vegan Society as being a vegan food.

This is a short list of comman replacement ideas for vegan baking recipes. Be sure to check out the natural sugar substitutes page for more in-depth information the best ways to replace sugar in baking and in other kinds of vegan recipes.

Ingredient	Substitute(s)
Sugar	Turbinado, Agave Nectar,Rapadura, Date Sugar, and Maple Syrup (I recommend using Grade B because the minerals are still in it.)
Butter	Coconut oil (for sweet breads like vegan banana bread, Earth Balance organic spread (the regular kind is vegan, but has GMO's).
White Flour	Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (I recommend Hodgson Mills ), Oat Flour, Quinoa Flour (doesn't work for all recipes - but it is gluten-free), and Garbanzo Flour (also gluten-free).
Eggs	Packaged Egg Replacer, or take 1 tbsp ground Organic Flax Seed and mix into 1/3 cup boiling water. Stir continuously until the mixture thickens and becomes gelantinous. This amount replaces 1 egg.
Milk	almond milk or hemp seed milk work well. Try to avoid soy milk as it has been associated with some health problems

Check out these delicious vegan baking recipes!

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