15 Baking Substitutes You Probably Have

Comfort baking is a thing I’ve learned about during this quarantine. I knew about comfort eating, comfort drinking, and comfort shopping (well, online shopping for now), but never comfort baking before. But then, it hit me. Just like that, last week, something awoke inside of me and I had this undeniable urge to make oatmeal cookies and brownies and corn bread. My boyfriend didn’t know what had come over me. I was storming the pantries, ranting things like, “How could we not have baking soda!! Who doesn’t have baking soda?! This is unacceptable.”

I totally understand comfort baking now. It provides several things we need during these uncertain times. First off, if you’re new to baking, then it provides you the chance to learn a new skill, which gets synapses firing in your brain in a very satisfying way. (By the way, if you and your partner have been feeling out-of-touch, try learning a new recipe together because learning together bonds you). Baking offers this second experience of feeling productive and resourceful. Making something from scratch makes you feel like you can take care of yourself and your family, even without our usual luxuries available to us, which is very comforting during these times. Finally, when you’re done, comfort baking results in…baked goods! And they just make you feel like a kid again, back in mom’s kitchen. There’s something essential about that right now.

Of course, since we aren’t all running to the grocery store whenever we want right now, just for one or two ingredients, you may find yourself without a baking ingredient you need. But there are substitutes for most common baking ingredients, like these.

If you don’t have baking soda, it’s hard to bake much. It has leavening properties and allows your dough to rise. So you’ll have dense, thin mush without it. But if you don’t have it, try this: two teaspoons of baking powder equates to half a teaspoon of baking soda.