Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Warming Your Eggs

This is your PSA for the day.

You can thank me later when you are making a cake.

Recipes for baking always tell you that your eggs, the ones that you BAKE with, need to be a room temperature before you start doing anything else. You know that, right? Do you know why?

It is because eggs that are cold will not give you enough volume when you are baking. That is one of the reason why you are adding them, because they give “lift” to what you are baking. Isn’t baking wonderful!!

I wonder if eggs can give me lift in other areas?

But I digress.

I can tell you that, organized person that I am, I can never remember to get the eggs that I need out of the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before I am going to bake with them.

Flour? Check!

Sugar? Check!

Various dry ingredients? Check!

Wet ingredients? Check!

Eggs at room temperature?

Well dang.

But I have a little trick that can fix my frigid egg issue.

Warming your egg

Crack the eggs into a small container. Fill a larger container with enough warm, but NOT hot, water that the water will come half way up the side of the smaller container when said smaller container is placed in said larger container.

Gently mix the eggs and then let them sit for a minute or two, stirring gently every 30 seconds or so.

VOILA! Eggs that are warm enough to bake with.

The idea of warming the not so room temperature eggs in not a new one. You can find something similar on Baking Bites, only they recommend putting the uncracked egg into a pan with warm water. I used to do that, but it still takes a bit of time, almost as much as just letting them set out on the counter. It was a frustration.

And then I remembered my science.

I do occasionally use that Bachelor of Science.

What you want is for as much of the surface area of the molecules that make up the egg to come in contact with the warmth from the water, without the water and egg actually mixing. If you have the egg still in the shell, sitting in the warm water, it takes longer for the warmth to penetrate the shell and get to the yolk of the egg. BUT, if you crack the egg into the smaller container, gently stir it up and let the smaller container sit in the warm water in the larger container with occasional gentle egg mixing to re-distribute warmed and not warmed egg molecules…..the egg warms faster. And you get your Monkey Bread in the oven faster. Which means that you get to eat it earlier.

Well that last part isn’t really true because the Monkey Bread doesn’t get eaten until tonight.

And let me say again…..DO NOT USE REALLY HOT WATER. If you do, then you will have a very gently cooked soft boiled shell-less egg. An egg that tastes GREAT but is useless for baking.

Not that I would know anything about THAT!

Now don’t you feel smarter? Go forth and bake!

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