What Is Vegan Baking and How Do You Get Started?

Vegan baking is baking without eggs, dairy, or other animal-derived ingredients. You can make almost anything—cookies, cakes, pie crusts, shortbread, puff pastry—but the ingredients that normally provide structure, richness, and moisture have to be replaced deliberately. The main skill is understanding what eggs and dairy were doing in a recipe, then choosing a substitute that does the same job. If you just leave the eggs out, you usually get something dense, dry, or crumbly.

How vegan baking differs from regular baking

In conventional baking, eggs and dairy aren't just flavor. They're functional:

• Eggs bind, add moisture, help things rise, and contribute structure and richness.
• Butter and dairy add fat, flavor, browning, and tenderness.
• Milk adds liquid, fat, and sometimes acidity.

When you remove them, you're removing part of the recipe's architecture. Vegan baking works when you replace those functions, not just the ingredients.

What eggs do, and what to use instead

The right choice depends on the recipe. A cookie that needs to hold together wants a binder; a sponge cake that needs lift wants something whipped or a leavener.

The core ingredients to keep on hand

• Vegan butter — for flavor and creaming, especially in cookies and cakes.
• Vegan shortening — a solid fat that's central to flaky textures. Veganbaking.net notes that shortening "alters the way gluten is formed in baked items that utilize wheat-based flours," which is why it matters for pie crusts, shortbreads, and puff pastry. Their site includes a recipe for a cocoa butter–based vegan shortening.
• Non-dairy milk — the liquid base for most batters. You can also make your own: Veganbaking.net describes a toasted coconut milk made from toasted coconut flour, which they suggest using anywhere a recipe calls for a large proportion of liquid—ice creams, cakes, puddings, cream sauces, pancakes, even oatmeal.
• Binders and leaveners — flax, chia, aquafaba, baking powder, baking soda.
• Acid — vinegar or lemon juice, often needed to activate baking soda.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Dense, heavy results. Usually too little leavening or a binder that's too heavy. Check that your baking powder is fresh, and don't overmix once flour is in.

Dry, crumbly texture. Often too little fat or moisture. Vegan butter and shortening carry a lot of this load—don't reduce them casually.

Spread too much or too little. Fat temperature and type matter. Shortening behaves differently from butter, and swapping one for the other changes the outcome.

Flat flavor. Dairy and butter carry a lot of taste. Toasted ingredients, cocoa butter, and good vanilla help fill that gap.

Beginner-friendly recipes to start with

Start where structure is forgiving:

• Shortbread cookies — a good test of vegan butter and shortening. Veganbaking.net's buttery vegan shortbread is built around letting the fat flavor lead.
• Pie crust — teaches you how shortening affects gluten and flakiness.
• Simple cakes and pancakes — easy places to practice non-dairy milk and egg replacers.
• Puddings and cream sauces — good for experimenting with homemade non-dairy milks.

Pick one recipe, change one variable at a time, and note what happened. That's how you learn which substitute does what in your own kitchen.