Egg-Free Loaf Cake
Vinegar and baking soda replace the egg, creating carbon dioxide and a moist, fluffy result.
- Preparation
- 15 min
- Cook/bake time
- 35 min
- Total
- 50 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Calories
Vinegar and baking soda replace the egg, creating carbon dioxide and a moist, fluffy result. An egg does three things in a loaf cake: it leavens, binds, and retains moisture. All three can be replaced, and the most famous proof is called Wacky Cake, a cake from the rationing era that still works perfectly today.
Why this works
Baking soda is a base and reacts with acid to form carbon dioxide, the exact same reaction that makes a school science experiment foam up. In the batter, it creates fine gas bubbles that leaven the cake, and this begins the moment the vinegar and baking soda meet. This is why the batter must go into the oven immediately. If you let it sit for twenty minutes, you will bake a cake whose leavening agent is already spent. The second job of the egg, binding, is taken over here by the flour starch and oil together. Using oil instead of butter is not about saving money. Oil is liquid at room temperature and stays that way even in the cooled cake, which is why egg-free oil cakes are still moist on the third day while butter cakes become firm.
Step-by-step instructions
- 1
Preheat the oven
Preheat the oven to 180 °C top and bottom heat and grease a 30 cm loaf pan. The oven must be ready before the batter, not the other way around, because the leavening reaction begins immediately and does not wait.
- 2
Sift the dry ingredients
Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together into a bowl. Sifting is mandatory for cocoa because its lumps will not dissolve in a batter and will remain as bitter spots in the cake.
- 3
Add the wet ingredients and stir briefly
Pour in the water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla, and stir only until no dry flour is visible, which takes about thirty seconds. The batter is allowed to look lumpy. Stirring longer develops gluten, and then the cake will become tough instead of tender.
- 4
Into the oven immediately
Pour the batter into the pan and put it in the oven without delay. The reaction between the vinegar and baking soda is already underway, and every minute of waiting is spent leavening power. Bake for thirty-five minutes until a wooden skewer comes out clean.
