Egg free cake disaster

Yeah, it's called chemistry. You can't mess around with baking recipes the way you can with cooking. If you want to make an eggless cake, start with a eggless cake recipe.

It's because you're not using eggs. You're using a substitute expecting the same results. Explicit recipes require explicit ingredients unless the recipe specifically says you can substitute one thing for another.

Which recipe are you following, and to make what kind of cake? You've been pretty vague in your post expecting people to come to your aid with zero information.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but some recipes require eggs with no substitutes being viable.

Quick Edit: Eggs fluff up while mixing which creates air pockets in the batter. Applesauce will NOT do that.

It's really only useful for maybe one egg in an oil based batter for muffins, banana bread type stuff. Anything else and it's just so-so.

There are lots of egg-free recipes out there. Tons of nice vegan cakes that just work even if you use dairy milk, butter etc instead of the vegan stuff.

Honestly, you sound exhausting. You say you’re an experienced baker how do you not understand that substituting ingredients will cause your bakes to turn out differently? Apple sauce is not an egg, why do you expect it to react like an egg?. You keep saying it’s worked for other people, do you know anyone that has made the same substitution in the same recipe you are using?

Different egg substitutes do different things. Apple sauce binds, but won't help the cake rise. A bit of baking soda plus apple cider vinegar is usually used for that in vegan recipes.

Baking needs a specific ratio of ingredients to work. Change that ratio and things won't turn out the same. Whether that's flour/gluten, moisture content, fat, rising agent like baking powder or yeast, etc.

An egg has very unique properties that affect a cake. It's not like a spice that is there just for flavor, it has a specific role in the chemistry and composition of the dough or batter it's in.

SOMETIMES, substituting 1 for 1 CAN work in SOME recipes. But it's not a blanket solution that works every time, because applesauce is NOT an egg. They simply don't function the same way on a molecular level.

So instead of just substituting it 1 for 1 in your favourite recipes, you should seek out recipes that were tested specifically to be eggless and avoid yourself the headache.

Buy “the elements of baking”, it really teaches you how to substitute eggs (and other things) in recipes so you can see why you sound exhausting and entitles, even when you do a lot of things wrong

Egg substitutes arent going to be exactly like egg because they arent egg. Just like gluten substitute wont be exactly like gluten because it isn't gluten