A few weeks back blogger friend Christine at Colorado Vegan let me know that The Vegg was giving out their cookbook and a 1.5 oz serving of The Vegg, a plant-based vegan egg yolk, to bloggers. I contacted Rocky, author and creator of The Vegg, immediately to see if I could get in on the fun.

I received the 80 page color cookbook and product within days. Thank you Rocky!

What is the Vegg?

“The Vegg is a 100% plant-based egg yolk replacement. Using only natural ingredients, we have created a product that replicates the taste and texture of egg yolks for use in your favorite dishes. It is perfect for french toast, dipping, hollandaise and much more. Create your favorite egg-based recipes and experience the rich flavor of egg yolk without the cholesterol, allergens, and cruelty to animals.” – thevegg.com

What did I make?

I made two recipes from the cookbook, the scrambled tofu and Lemon Bars.

How did they turn out? See for yourself.

 

Amazing! Right?

Some recipes in the book will call for prepared Vegg or Vegg powder. Prepared Vegg is just the powder blended with water.

Example 1/4 cup prepared Vegg > 1 teaspoon Vegg + 1/4 cup water (blended)

Vegg powder is the straight product. It is comprised of: Fortified Nutritional Yeast (dry yeast, niacin pyridoxine, hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin hydrochloride, folic acid, b12), Sodium Alginate, Black Salt, and Beta Carotene.

It basically looks like finely ground nutritional yeast and it smells like EGGS, which is really strange.

Why does it smell like eggs?

I learned from a few Happy Herbivore recipes that black salt can be added to tofu scrambles, enhancing the flavor and smell of the dish with that unique sulphur-like smell of eggs.

I only really noticed the smell right after blending. When I made the scramble I was very relieved that the sulphur smell wasn’t noticeable. That was one of my least favorite things—ever—when cooking eggs.

It was really uncanny how similar the blended product is to egg yolks. Which is good because it is a vegan yolk!

You can find the scrambled tofu recipe here.

Now I have made a lot of regular tofu scrambles that are delicious. The Vegg spin enhanced the standard tofu scramble like you wouldn’t believe, it added a proof positive texture and flavor to the sautéed tofu. I am thoroughly convinced that if you served this up to a skeptical omnivore (the ultimate test) they wouldn’t know.

I added spinach and mini peppers to increase the veggies and use up some stuff from the fridge.

Consensus? Super tasty, a new fave.

 

You can find the lemon bars here. I keep referring to it as cake because mine looked nothing like the bars in the picture. The recipe is originally made with gluten-free flours, which I am not so I subbed white whole wheat flour. It’s possible that if you made this the GF way they would be lemon bars.

I was actually really looking forward to lemon bars, it was something that my great-grandma always used to make when I was little and I loved them. Mostly because of the lemon though I’m sure the powdered sugar helped too.

Even though it turned into cake instead of bars it was by no means any less delicious.

The cake was delectable!

I decided to be fancy and bake it in a fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. While pouring the batter in I couldn’t imagine how it wouldn’t leak out the bottom, but hoping physics would prevent that kind of catastrophe. It did. No messes.

The texture and make-up of the cake were perfect. Although I always tell people that veganizing most baked goods is easy to do, it’s when you try to make the healthy/no-oil version that textures can get out of whack.

I added extra lemon zest because I just can’t contain myself around lemony things.

One of the other unique attributes that distinguishes the Vegg from Ener-G or using flax eggs in cooking is that through molecular gastronomy and spherification techniques the Vegg can be made into very real looking egg yolks, which is nice for presentation if you wanted to replicate recipes like fried eggs and eggs benedict. For even more recipes go to the Vegg.com.

This was really fun to try out and I look forward to trying more recipes.

What would you use the Vegg for? Did you love or hate eggs before?

xoxo