SOS Mom Saver: Easy Egg Substitute

Given the current egg shortage due to a recall of 380 million eggs because of salmonella, I thought I'd repost this as a reminder for anyone who may find themselves without eggs, but still needing to cook:

I know we've all been there at one time or another. You start baking the cupcakes for your child's class tomorrow & realize you're out of eggs...or that one of your dear family members put the EMPTY egg carton BACK in the fridge. (Ahem...my husband...)


You either don't feel like running to the store when you've already started baking, or you're a one-car family like us and can't because your spouse has the car.

What do you do? Are you stuck? Do you HAVE to run to the store?

I actually discovered the simple solution to this problem for a much different reason. We were poor. Like dirt poor. It cost $350 just to feed and medicate our infant son every month and our grocery budget (including food, paper products, cleaning products, personal hygene, & diapers) for the ENTIRE family was only $200 a month. Those numbers added up to us having to make some hard choices and drastic sacrifices, and led to us finding cheap alternatives to keep us going.

We can afford to buy eggs now, but still use this substitute when baking because no one can tell the difference. Why use our expensive, organic eggs when something else will do?

You need these 3 ingredients:

Water, corn starch, & a tablespoon. And no...you don't HAVE to use bottled water. I don't use bottled water. You get a picture of the bottled water instead of my sink because my dirty dishes-filled sink just wasn't as pretty.

You'll need 1 tablespoon of corn starch per egg in the recipe.

Doesn't that look so pretty?

Dump the corn starch in a bowl. (That's the "official" method. You're supposed to mix the corn starch & water together in a separate bowl before adding it to the mixture. I did that for you (don't you feel special?), but I don't do that any other time. I just dump both straight into my mix & follow the regular directions from there. I'm all about simplicity. And less dirty dishes.

You'll need 3 tablespoons of water per egg. So...that's 1 tablespoon of corn starch and 3 tablespoons of water per egg. If you need 2 eggs, you'll need 2 tablespoons of corn starch, and 6 tablespoons of water. You get the idea.

And again, the "official" instructions are to dump the water in the corn starch which is in a separate bowl.

If you've followed the "official" method, you'll stir the water & corn starch together and then add them to the rest of your mixture as if the mixture was eggs. Viola! You've solved your problem of not having eggs (or just saved yourself some money).

You can also use ground flax seed instead of the corn starch. However, ground flax seed isn't recommended for pregnant women, and is more expensive & not as shelf-stable so we just use corn starch. (I don't remember why it's not good for pregnant women, I just remember it isn't. Perhaps someday I'll get that information and share it with you. Until then, my dear, close friend Google would be ecstatic to help you.)