Eating the reproductive matter of chickens has long grossed me out. So I haven’t really missed eggs. My go-to egg replacers (banana, flax seeds mixed with water, tofu) work just fine for baking. But when a rep from Follow Your Heart told me about their new VeganEgg, I was intrigued. As she put it in her introductory email, “After roughly 10 years in the development stages, VeganEgg hatched as an egg alternative that behaves, tastes and even smells like a real chicken egg and is the first of its kind to scramble like a traditional egg.”
You know what hooked me? That people spent ten years developing a faux egg. What the heck – send me some. Plus, World Egg Day was coming up on October 14. Why should lacto-ovo vegetarians have all the fun?
VeganEgg comes in a little egg carton looking box. I half expected to open it and find four fake shells filled with fake egg. But instead, a packet of yellow powder was inside the box. The main ingredients are algal flour and algal protein. Yep, algae. I realize any non-vegans reading this are probably running to their kitchens, opening their fridges, and kissing a real egg right now. But some of us are vegan adventurers, unafraid of a little edible algae.
I decided to follow a quiche recipe, since my flax seed mixture doesn’t really lend itself to an edible quiche. I mixed six level tablespoons of VeganEgg with 1 ¼ cup cold water and ½ cup soymilk. The most surprising thing was that as I started stirring, the mixture released a sulfurous, rotten egg smell. That was more realistic than I expected!
I made the following quiche recipe, except for the part about coiling hundreds of strips of carrot and zucchini into spirals. Way too much work! Instead, I layered a couple of handfuls of carrot and zucchini strips with layers of Follow Your Heart Garden Herb Strips, which are basically fake cheese. Then I poured the VeganEgg concoction on top. Fifty-five minutes later, I had baked my first-ever quiche.
By the time I could take a photo, half the quiche was gone!
It came out great! I’m not sure how much it tasted like eggs, since I’ve avoided them for many years. My vegetarian husband eats eggs, and said it didn’t taste quite like eggs, but tasted like a quiche. It all held together and was really delicious. It was exciting to finally make a quiche, and I hope to experiment further with VeganEgg. Next, maybe I’ll try scrambling it.
Garden Herb & Vegetable Spiral Quiche
Recipe Courtesy of: Spork Foods
Ingredients
- 1 9-inch vegan pie crust, thawed according to package
- 1 package Follow Your Heart Garden Herb Slices
- 1 orange carrot
- 2 purple carrots
- 2 zucchini
- 6 level tablespoons Follow Your Heart VeganEgg
- 1 ¼ cup ice-cold water
- ½ cup ice-cold soymilk, or other non-dairy, creamer
- 3/4 teaspoon sea salt, plus dash
- ½ teaspoon finely ground black pepper, plus dash
- 2 teaspoons fresh thyme, finely chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°.
- Poke crust with fork and bake empty, for about 10 minutes or as directed on package. Set aside.
- Meanwhile, using a vegetable peeler, peel carrots and zucchini into long thin ribbons, going all the way through vegetables. Set aside.
- Cut each slice Follow Your Heart Garden Herb Slices into thirds, creating rectangular strips. Set aside.
- In a mixing bowl, measure VeganEgg™ powder. Add ice cold water and creamer, sea salt, pepper, and fresh thyme. Whisk until smooth and uniform. Set aside.
- Coil vegetables and cheese in spiral shape, starting with a tight coil for center of quiche. Alternate with different colored carrots, zucchini and a few slices of cheese, building from center of crust towards edge. Sprinkle with dash sea salt and pepper.
- Reduce heat to 350°.
- Pour VeganEgg mixture on top. Bake until firm, about 50-55 minutes.
