When I became a vegetarian there weren’t a lot of good vegetarian cookbooks, plus most of them were for ovo-lacto vegetarians and I don’t eat eggs. For years I pined away, wishing I could make good muffins, cakes, pancakes, and the like. I tried all the egg replacers and found them to really be lacking. I did manage some decent treat using things like applesauce and yogurt, but sometimes I didn’t want their distinct flavors in what I was preparing.

Finally I began to play around with it myself and found that it is incredibly easy to make everything from cookies to pancakes from one basic recipe. How you make it into each different treat is through how much water you add to the dough, as well as what extras you put in. For instance you will put a lot less water into a cookie dough, than a pancake batter. You’ll add more sugar to cookies, too. In muffins you might want to add dried fruit, nuts, etc. Cookies may have peanut butter or things like that added to it, which all affect the level of water needed.

One of the nice things I found is that, even when I messed up I turned out something edible. Oh, maybe the muffins were a little gooey on the inside or the cookies didn’t flatten out the way I wanted, but they were all edible.

So, here’s my very basic recipe:

Basic Flour Mix

1 cup whole wheat flour

  • 1 cup white whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt

Enough water to make batter/dough the consistency you need.

That being said here are a few variations I do for different recipes.

  1. If I want my cookies to flatten out some I add about ¼ cup sunflower or safflower oil.
  2. If using peanut butter you’ll need a bit more water.
  3. When making a sweet treat I use Sucanat, a whole sugar. Not too sweet add ½ cup, really sweet add 1 cup.
  4. To know how much of a spice to put in, for cookies or muffins, just refer to a recipe in a book and use their recommendation. Just remember spices you use less of, herbs you can use more of. Don’t be tempted to add a bunch more of the spices as it can be very overpowering. If you really want it to be especially cinnamony, then add about ¼ to ½ tsp more.

For cake I have a wonderful recipe that you can mix up right in the 9×13 pan.

Now you can enjoy your treats and have them healthy, too.