Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Anyone remember those Danish butter cookies in a tin that are popular around Christmas? I've got a recipe for them calling for butter, ap flour, sugar, salt, vanilla, and egg yolk. According to my friend, the egg yolk is really important (richness? Texture? Not sure why) and I don't have a lot of experience with shortbread types of cookies to know if that's true.

What do you guys think as a sub for the yolk (recipe calls for only one). Should I just try to leave it out? I've got the Vegg, flax, Ener-G, silken tofu, pretty much the gamut of egg substitutes but I've never had to sub for yolk only.

I also have imitation butter flavor. Can anyone chime in about how much to use? It looks like usually 1/2 - 1 tsp per cup of margarine/shortening but I figured I'd check first. The extract doesn't smell that good and I don't want to overdo it, especially since I'm already using EB which has its own flavoring.

P.S. I did see a past forum post about egg yolk (in tart crusts) but there was no resolution!
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=519

Thanks in advance!

I would not use the butter flavor. I'd probably just replace the yolk with two more tablespoons of E.B. There are lots of non-vegan shortbread recipes that do not contain egg. It should be fine.

I needed to replace egg yolk only once (storebought cookie mix). I used lecithin.

"Egg Yolk Substitutions: 1 egg = 1-1/2 tablespoons lecithin granules + 2 teaspoons water (use: moisture and binding)"

http://vegweb.com/recipes/egg-substitutes

I've never heard of shortbread containing eggs; that's just weird.

+1 not yummy. My gramma's shortbread was the same ingredients, but no egg yolk. And she was a gramma so you know she knew about baking.

Yeah, me either and I was just going to use a vegan shortbread recipe (isn't there one in VCIYCJ?) but according to google butter cookies are something in between short bread and sugar cookies. I think the proportion of butter:flour:sugar is different. That's why I wasn't sure!