The Key Ingredients Swaps For Tender, Fluffy Vegan Pumpkin Bread

Though turning your favorite dishes into vegan versions may sound challenging, with the right substitutions, you'll hardly notice that any animal-based products are absent. We spoke to Nisha Vora, "The New York Times" bestselling cookbook author of "Big Vegan Flavor" for ways to increase our chances of pulling fluffy, moist pumpkin bread out of the oven. "Pumpkin puree is already very dense, and when you bake without eggs, it can be even denser and heavier," Vora admits. 

The goal of a vegan baker is to use ingredients that can help inject lightness into recipes so that a slice of pumpkin bread is cake-like to bite into, instead of brick-like or dusty. Vora says, "When I make vegan pumpkin bread, I use a combination of vegan buttermilk and aquafaba, which is simply the liquid from a can of chickpeas." Though chickpea can-juice may sound like an unappealing addition, aquafaba is used by bartenders and bakers alike to give texture to drink and food recipes. Exchanging each egg in a recipe with 3 tablespoons of aquafaba is a good swap measure. "When you lightly whip it, it turns foamy," Vora encourages. "This, in turn, gives a nice lift to cakes and makes them fluffier." These are the kind of results we are after.

Whipping up chickpea juice isn't the only way a vegan recipe like pumpkin bread can be improved upon. If you're used to pouring buttermilk into batter and are looking for an equally tangy substitute — minus the dairy — you have options. "A vegan buttermilk substitute such as oat milk and lemon juice or soy milk and apple cider vinegar has acidity, and when combined with baking soda in the heat of the oven, enhances the amount of rise in cakes and breads," Nisha Vora helpfully suggests. After stirring a cup of dairy-free milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, you'll notice that the mixture will start to curdle after a few minutes. This resulting liquid won't be as thick as traditional homemade buttermilk, but adding the vegan substitute to your pumpkin bread recipe means that you'll have a moist, fluffy bread that may surprise you with its tender crumb.

Try Vora's suggested swaps when setting out to make your next vegan version of pumpkin banana bread. In this recipe, use aquafaba instead of eggs and vegan buttermilk for the Greek yogurt. And don't forget a final crowning finish of powdery sugar or cinnamon before plating pretty slices of autumnal joy. Slicing into this animal-product-free baked treat will have you convinced that, yes, it is possible to make delicious baked goods sans eggs, butter, and milk.