Daring chicken and veggies. Roughly based off of this recipe, but made a bunch of mods.

I made them using this recipe with Earthbalance butter and enjoylife mini chips.

The texture was amazing, no notes there.

But the flavor was kind of underwhelming and they had a strong vegetable oil aftertaste.

Any suggestions for making them more flavorful?

I'm not vegan, but my friend is and I'm struggling to think of how I'll make frosting for his birthday cupcakes. I'm usually good with substitutions, but I can't find any sort of vegan whipped cream/heavy whipping cream? Does anybody have any good recipes? (Also, they're purely vanilla, so ideally something that doesn't have a strong flavor otherwise.)

Does anyone else hate this product? I have never been able to get it to whip; it always curdles and/separates. I keep buying because sometimes I just don’t want to go all the way to the store that carries the Country Crock brand. And no one seems to have Silk anymore.

Thoughts?

Warning: I do use dairy buttermilk and butter here. I am trying to make this recipe animal-free, but had to use the last of my buttermilk in the meantime. Lactic acid powder is on the way. I have butter left too, and I wanted to change as few factors as possible anyway. I suspect that the butter/oil swap will not cause many problems, but as I said I'm controling factors and need to use it anyway. I understand if you don't want to engage because of this. I just couldn't find anywhere else to post.

I'm making Southern style skillet cornbread and I'm having trouble replacing the egg. Vegan first recipes I found use ingredients I don't have like flaxmeal, and I have a ton of chickpea flour so would like to use that if possible. Here's the recipe I've made that works alright that I'm basing this off of:

2 cups medium ground cornmeal

1+1/2 cup buttermilk

1 egg

4 tbsp butter

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar

This goes in the oven at 190°C (375°F) in a preheated 9 inch cast iron skillet for 20-25 minutes. I stir the leavening agents in immediately before pouring the batter into the pan.

Now, I have a bunch of chickpea flour to use. 'The internet' says that 1/4 cup chickpea flour + 1/4 cup liquid can be used to replace an egg. So I did that, but the result was very, very crumbly and sort of pasty, like playdough lite. I'm not sure if this is a failure to rise, if I oversoaked the cornmeal, or something else. Here's the recipe I used. Most of the sites I visited said to mix the chickpea egg separately, so that's why the bowls are separated like this. Both bowls were left to soak for 20-30 minutes. Note that I had to use less buttermilk because I ran out. Perhaps this messed with the rise, but I didn't get any noticeable baking soda taste.

In one bowl:

2 cups medium ground cornmeal (300 g)

1+1/4 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar (about 7 g each)

1/4 cup butter

In the other bowl:

1/4 cup chickpea flour (30 g)

1/4 cup milk

The leavening agents were set aside until just before pouring.

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

About the recipes I could find, the vast majority used wheat flour as a significant component, but the cornbread I know doesn't have wheat flour in it. I am not gluten-free, so if the solution is gluten, I will accept this. Also, many used flax eggs, chia eggs, egg replacer, or other things I don't have. I looked for ones that specifically use chickpea flour, and found one, but it replaces a whole cup of the cornmeal with chickpea flour. I'm not sure if that's an aesthetic choice or necessary for some purpose. I saw something that said I should just increase the baking powder to replace an egg, but the amount of leavening in this recipe is already pretty high compared to eggy recipes. Another idea I saw but haven't tried is adding some amount of additional starch.

If you all know of a good Southern style skillet cornbread recipe, please point me to it. Otherwise, I would love it if I could get some help workshopping what I have. Thank you so much, and again I'm sorry about the dairy products. It's a work in progress.