Knowledge Base › Fran Costigan - Grateful, Sweet, and Totally Vegan Holiday Desserts

If using eggs in baking, is it mainly for binding the ingredients or does it affect the ingredients another way?

Grateful, Sweet, and Totally Vegan Holiday Desserts

Fran Costigan - Grateful, Sweet, and Totally Vegan Holiday Desserts

Recorded

This event was on November 4, 2025

Join Chef Fran Costigan, Rouxbe Director of Vegan Pastry for a discussion of how to make holiday desserts delicious and easy. Fran will offer suggestions for Thanksgiving desserts that wow without any dairy, eggs or refined white sugar or stress.

View Event Details

Question

ly brod

If using eggs in baking, is it mainly for binding the ingredients or does it affect the ingredients another way?

Answer

Another way that's a really, that egg question comes up a lot in vegan or plant-based desserts, of course, because we don't use eggs, we don't use dairy, we don't use eggs. And so eggs do bind, but they have other properties as well. They leave, they add moisture and liquid, they add some flavor. And so you really have to consider all of that. And in terms of the second part of your question, does it affect ingredients? Another way, if you've been listening to me for a while or if I've been working with you, you know that I say every single ingredient, sometimes even a brand, you know, a difference between a 60% chocolate and a 72% chocolate or using different kinds of plant milks is going to make a difference. So yes, eggs does, egg is for binding, but it is also for all the other things that I mentioned.

Fran Costigan

Director of Vegan Pastry

FranCostigan.com

Fran Costigan is internationally renowned as the authority on vegan desserts. Trained at the New York Restaurant School and Natural Gourmet Institute, Fran was a chef in both traditional and vegan pastry kitchens before moving into teaching over 20 years ago. A lifelong chocoholic and long time vegan, Fran’s latest book, Vegan Chocolate: Unapologetically Luscious and Decadent Dairy Free Desserts, (Running Press 2013) is for all who madly, deeply love chocolate desserts, whether or not dietary considerations are an issue. Her previous cookbook, More Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts Naturally (Book Publishing Company 2006) is the basis of the Costigan Vegan Baking Boot Camp Intensive®. For more information, www.francostigan.com.