Fruit or vegetable purée

Fruit or vegetable purée – 40–50g /1½–2oz puréed cooked apple, pear, pumpkin or ripe banana can help bind loaf cakes or muffins. Also wonderful in pancake batters. Choose according to your recipe as the flavour will be apparent in the end result.

As egg is often used as a raising agent in baking, you’ll see many of the recipes use a combination of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar (or lemon juice), which react forming carbon dioxide, a powerful raising agent. As you go through the chapters, you’ll see my preferred egg alternative suggestions in the Flexible sections.