Super subs: alternative ingredients for traditional baking

Milk adds structure to cake batter so it doesn’t collapse, adds moisture and can help form a delicious crust on the surface of your sponge, making it an important part of a cake recipe. While there are soy and nut milks out there, they will profoundly alter the texture of your sponge and may not work at all. If you’re baking for someone who only avoids milk because it doesn’t agree with them, making them feel bloated or sluggish, try a2 Milk – it lacks the protein we have trouble digesting and works in exactly the same way as regular milk, so won’t affect your recipe whatsoever.

Butter isn’t the demonised ingredient it used to be, but many of us still choose to limit our intake. It’s easy to replace, however – just use oil instead. Vegetable, sunflower, olive and rapeseed oils all work well and result in a lighter, moister sponge (although they tend to lack the richness of traditional butter cakes). Use a little less oil than you would butter, however – around seventy to eighty percent of the original weight should work. If you’re just trying to cut down on dairy instead of eliminating it completely, try adding a splash of milk to add a little creaminess.

Eggs act as a binder and rising agent in cakes, so they’re another important element to any cake mix. If your recipe calls for a large number of eggs, then it can be hard to replace them all with something else, but there are several options if you only need a substitute for one or two. There are several egg replacements on the market, which can be spooned and mixed into the cake batter without altering the flavour or texture very much, but for a more natural substitute, replacing an egg with a pureed banana can work wonders. It might sound strange, but it’s actually a very effective way of binding everything together – just make sure you increase the amount of baking soda by up to fifty percent to help the cake rise.

Another alternative is to stir a tablespoon of ground flaxseed into three tablespoons of water until it becomes thick and gelatinous. Be warned, however, that flaxseed has quite a distinct taste, so should only be used in cakes already heavily flavoured with something else, like chocolate.

Sugar is pretty vital when baking cakes – after all, it’s what makes sweet things sweet. But if you’re looking for a healthier alternative, there are plenty of options which also add a more interesting, complex flavour. Maple syrup is full of antioxidants and is actually three times sweeter than sugar, so you only have to add two-thirds of syrup to the amount of sugar you would normally use in your recipe. Agave syrup can be used in the same way for a slightly different, less sweet flavour, and for a very rich and flavourful alternative, try honey. Use around a quarter of the amount of honey as you would sugar, as it’s very strongly flavoured and can overpower everything else. Do be aware that the extra liquid in these alternatives might change the texture of your batter, and you may have to add more dry ingredients to your recipe to balance everything out.

While these are all tried and tested substitutions for traditional baking ingredients, it will still take a little bit of experimentation until you produce the perfect free-from cake. Depending on your recipe, you might need to add more or less of other ingredients, and the texture might be slightly different to what you’d normally expect. But the world of free-from baking is constantly growing, and clever bakers are producing cakes closer and closer to the gluten, dairy and sugar-filled treats we all know. So don’t worry about baking for someone who suffers from an allergy or intolerance – you’ve still got plenty of options.

It’s always a good idea to start off following recipes devised specifically for free-from baking, rather than trying to make your own substitutions. Once you’re familiar with how these new ingredients work, you will have a much higher success rate when substituting things in your favourite recipes. After some inspiration? Try Victoria Glass’ Gluten-free chestnut and vanilla cake, which uses honey instead of sugar and chestnut flour for a light, flavourful sponge, or her Coconut and blueberry cake, which is completely gluten- and dairy-free. Tess Ward’s Gluten- and sugar-free chocolate supreme cake includes black beans in the ingredients list, while Madeleine Shaw makes Raw chocolate brownies which are free from gluten, sugar, dairy and eggs, covering all the bases.