Make an eggless cake using canned peaches

Even if you don’t have any eggs in your refrigerator you can enjoy a delicious peach cake topped with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting. This cake recipe uses a can of peaches in place of the eggs. The peaches add moisture and flavor to this simple yellow cake.

Earlier this week a reader wrote and asked if I had a recipe to make a cake mix with no eggs. She didn’t have any cans of soda or jars of applesauce and she didn’t want to make a dump cake.

She gave me a list of items in her panty and one stuck out as a possible option for making an eggless cake, a can of peaches.

I’ve successfully used fruit puree as an egg substitute so I figured the peaches might work to make a cake from a mix.

It worked.

I baked the cake and swapped out peach puree for the eggs. The cake baked up beautifully but as it cooled it shrunk. I was disappointed until I took a bite.

The cake was moist and really delicious. It had such a mild peach flavor that I’m not sure you’d even detect the flavor if you frosted this cake with a traditional buttercream or even a chocolate frosting.

So if you don’t have any eggs and you just want to make a cake for a birthday or special occasion, you can use this recipe, but if you want to highlight the peach flavor you can frost it with a cream cheese frosting then add extra peaches.

Egg substitutes…

• You need 1/4 cup of fruit puree for each large egg in your recipe.
• If you drain off the liquid from a 15-ounce can of peaches and puree them you should get about 3/4 cup.
  • For a Duncan Hines Cake mix, you’ll need 3/4 cup of peach puree to use in place of 3 eggs.
  • If you use another cake mix, use 1/4 cup of puree per egg.

Water or Light Syrup

• The Duncan Hines Cake Mix calls for 1 cup of water. If your mix calls for another quantity, use that instead.
  • When I measured out the liquid in the can of peaches it equaled 1 cup.
  • My sliced peaches were packed in light syrup so I used that in place of the water. If your peaches are in fruit juice that would work well too.
  • If you use peaches in heavy syrup you may want to drain it off and use water instead otherwise it will add too much sugar to your cake mix.

NOTE:

• You will notice in the video that I puree the entire contents of the can of peaches. I did that because I had already made this cake twice and had measured the peach puree and the liquid and knew I was getting 3/4 cup of fruit puree and 1 cup of liquid from the can.
• You can use the little cups of fruit or larger jars of fruit. Just be sure to measure the fruit and liquid separately.
• If you don’t have either you can chop and smash the peaches really well.

Oil vs. Butter

• You can use oil or you can use melted butter. Use the amount listed on your cake mix.
• I chose butter to enhance the flavor of the cake.

Mixing

• Follow the instructions on your cake mix to blend the ingredients together.

Baking

• These cakes will take much longer than usual to bake through.
• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • Two 8-inch round cakes: 34-38 minutes
  • 9×13-inch cake: 38-44 minutes
• I tested cupcakes and they didn’t bake very well. I think the batter is just too dense to make nice cupcakes.

Cooling and shrinking

• Allow the cake to cool completely. Your cake will probably shrink and pull away from the sides of the pan.
  • I tested this recipe three times and I set a timer and beat the cake mix according to the package instructions and each time the cake shrunk. Just don’t expect really tall layers and you’ll be fine.
  • You can see in the picture below my 8-inch layer cake.
  • I didn’t tort the layers. You can do that to make your finished cake a bit taller.

Frosting

I chose to frost my cake with a cream cheese frosting, which is really more like a no-bake cheesecake topping. It’s a wonderful topping for this cake but you can use any frosting you’d like.

You’ll need:

• 8 ounces of cream cheese
• 1/2 cup of powdered sugar
• 8 ounces of whipped topping (Cool Whip)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

Beat the cream cheese then add the powdered sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Then add the whipped topping and vanilla and beat until smooth.

Peach Layer Cake

• I originally baked two 8-inch cakes, frosted the layers with cream cheese frosting, and topped it with some caramelized peaches.
  • It was amazingly delicious! But I didn’t love how it looked in pictures.
  • It didn’t look fresh being the peaches turned brown when caramelized.
  • But seriously if you don’t mind the brown look then make this cake and top it with caramelized peaches. I think you will love it.

This is a picture of a Peach Cobbler cake that I made years ago.

It’s layers of yellow cake with some cinnamon mixed in, the cream cheese frosting, and lots of caramelized peaches. I even cut off the domed parts of the cake, crumbled it, then toasted it in a skillet with some butter and brown sugar to make a crispy topping.

Caramelized Peaches

• Heat 1/4 cup butter in a skillet set over medium-high heat.
• Stir in 1/2 cup of brown sugar and allow the sugar to melt.
• Drain a 15-ounce can of peaches and discard the liquid or save it for another use.
• Pour the peaches into the skillet.
• Cook, stirring often until the liquid thickens and the sugar caramelizes. This may take up to 10 minutes.
• Remove from the skillet and allow the caramelized peach sauce to cool before pouring it over the top of the cake.
• I would recommend chilling the frosted cake before topping it with the peaches too.

Peach slices

• If you prefer the fresher look of this cake topped with sliced peaches then just drain another can of peaches and use the slices to top the cake.

Other decorations

• Or you can bake the cake and decorate it using buttercream frosting.

  

You can layer your cake and frost it and add sprinkles and chocolate ganache drips to make a festive sprinkle birthday cake or you can bake a sheet cake and cut it and decorate it to create an adorable Unicorn Cake.

Recipe

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Peach Cupcakes

Peach Cheesecake