We had an emergency yesterday. It was one of those days when I needed cake, and we had no eggs. Prepare yourself for a dramatic story.
I know what you are thinking. You HAD to have cake? And the answer to that question is absolutely. There are certain days when everything is just not going right and the only answer to make things better is cake. I think the world would be a better place if everyone just had cake when they were having a bad day.
We never have any boxed baked goods in our house. Ever since Mom went on her label reading craze, she has been adamant about us making our own cakes and brownies from scratch.
Usually, we bake some cakes for our neighbors for Christmas with this wonderful recipe from our great-grandmother. (Before you ask, Mom won’t let us post it online as she says it is her only family secret.) This cake uses a box mix and some other wonderful ingredients. So Mom bought a ton of boxed cakes to prepare for the holidays.
Then, it dawned on us that instead of making cakes, a better idea would be to give our pretzel caramel bark. It is much easier to make ahead of time and wrap!
It felt like a party went off in my head when I saw those boxed cakes all lined up in the pantry this afternoon. This was the perfect answer to a gloomy winter day when nothing was going quite right. But alas, the day got a lot worse when I opened the refrigerator and saw that we were out of eggs.
Options for Substituting Eggs:
My hope started to rise again when I saw on this site that there were other options.
Pumpkin Puree:
Nope. We used it all in our cookies and donuts.
Unsweetened Applesauce:
Nope. We ate it all for our healthy snack requirement of the day.
Plain Yogurt:
Nope. We are still working out the kinks in our homemade yogurt recipe.
Soft Tofu:
Ah. Nope. I don’t even know what that is.
So now what? I NEEDED cake.
Then I remembered that for our blueberry muffin recipe, you can use either plain yogurt or sour cream. Finally! An ingredient that we had on hand. Mom really needs to go to the grocery store.
There is no wonder why people buy these boxed cakes. There could not be anything easier. I mixed up my odd ingredients and was on my way.
I will admit I was starting to have some doubts. The batter was pretty thick. It actually held some peaks like whipped cream.
I asked my Mom if she thought we should put it into one cake pan instead of two. She went on this long story about how she did that once and the cake spilled all over her oven and it took her days to clean. She made sure I knew I would be the one to scrap the bottom of the oven of burned cake if that were to happen. That terrified me enough that I decided on two cake pans.
Maybe Sour Cream is not the Best Substitute:
I made two large pancakes. What a day I was having.
But even though they did not rise, I still had my cake. And everything got better from there. Especially when Dad went to the grocery store and got us ice cream and whipped cream to go on top.
And yes, he got eggs.