Cookies Made with Hard-Boiled Egg Whites - It Works and It's Fantastic!

I love a chocolate chip cookie that lives in the sweet spot between hard and crispy and soft and chewy - a cookie that is good with a glass of milk (but doesn't require one) and that gently crumbles in my mouth, but doesn't fall apart in my hand if I hug it too hard.  These chocolate chip cookies fit the bill.  Their flavor - sweet and salty with just the right amount of chips - hits the mark as well.

The taste and texture aren't the only things that set these chocolate chip cookies apart from the crowd; it's their surprising ingredient - hard-boiled egg whites - that makes them so unique!  The egg whites dissolve during baking so your unsuspecting eaters will never know they were there.  I can't profess to understand all of the science behind why the hard-boiled egg whites give these cookies such a stellar texture, but I can say that surprisingly, using them works. 

Potato and Egg Cupcakes

I recently received a review copy of the book Muffin Tin Chef by Matt Kadey.  If I wrote the book, I would have called it Cupcake Tin Chef.  Other than that, I wouldn't have changed a thing.  The book is filled with ideas (and when I say filled, I mean that there are 101 ideas there) for sweet and savory dishes to make in cute single-serving sizes.  I've loved Matt's blog, Muffin Tin Mania, for years, and the book is now a valued addition to my collection.

This week, I'm going to feature two recipes that I've made inspired by Muffin Tin Chef (I've also got a book giveaway coming soon!).  Matt wrote an entire chapter just on brunch muffin tin recipes.  Since brunch is my favorite meal (seriously, does it get any better than brunch?), I focused my energies there.

Matt's Parmesan hash browns caught my eye right away - you can't go wrong with carbs and cheese!  But, since Matt is talking muffins and I'm talking cupcakes, I knew mine were going to need some frosting.  I took his Parmesan hash brown muffins an extra step and topped them with deviled egg frosting (a sweet twist on deviled eggs).  With Mother's Day coming soon, these potato and egg cupcakes might be just the thing to start Mom's morning off right.

Potato and Egg Cupcake Recipe

Deviled Egg Frosting

The best part of deviled eggs (if you like them at all - they are definitely a love/hate food) is the whipped up yolk.  The whites serve only as a rubbery delivery mechanism for yolky goodness.  Why must deviled eggs be served on egg whites?  Why can't they be served on, say, cupcakes?  They can!

Like its savory counterpart, deviled egg frosting starts with hard boiled egg yolks.  But, instead of lightening them up with mayonnaise, the frosting uses heavy whipping cream.  It's sweetened with the addition of powdered sugar and thickened with butter. The classic deviled egg topper, paprika, is mixed into the frosting, providing a little kick - and in my case, smokiness (I used a smoked variety of paprika).  The end result is a frosting like none other.  Because of all of the egg yolks, it's like eating a thick custard.  I'd devour a cup of this frosting straight up, but it is frosting, after all, and you may be wondering what flavors to pair it with.

Matzoh Brei Cupcakes for Passover

Passover is not a cupcake kind of holiday.  However, there's no reason not to sneak them onto the Passover menu in unexpected places.  In past years, I've brought you charoset cupcakes and gefilte fish cupcakes, and given you a recipe for flourless chocolate cupcakes that are worth crossing the Red Sea for.  This year, I've created Passover breakfast cupcakes - matzo brei cupcakes.

What Are Matzo Brei Cupcakes?

How To Make Matzoh Brei Like My Mom's

Every Jewish family has their own take on how to make matzoh brei - the classic Passover breakfast of eggs mixed with fried matzoh.  In this post, I share the matzoh brei recipe I've eaten every Passover since I could eat solid food.  Below the matzoh brei recipe, you'll find a barrage of variations.  If your family has a special way to make matzoh brei, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.  Also, be on the lookout for my matzoh brei cupcakes, coming soon!

Cupcakes Benedict - Maple Cupcakes Topped with Black Forest Bacon, Poached Eggs, and Maple Hollandaise Sauce

While cupcakes get some frosting lovin' on a regular basis, sometimes they get jealous of English muffins (or as I call them, stud muffins). Stud muffins are a key player in Eggs Benedict, where they are topped with bacon, eggs, and drippy, buttery hollandaise.  Cupcakes are used to playing it safe with perfectly coiffed frosting, but after years of dreaming, they were ready to get a little dirty.  They came to me for help and I arranged a cupcake and Eggs Benedict liaison - Cupcakes Benedict.

Maple Hollandaise Sauce

I'm a carbs girl - as if you couldn't have guessed that.  Come brunch time, you'll find me ordering the French toast, waffles, pancakes, or crepes (I barely take the time to the read the eggy options).  Because of my one-track brunch thinking, I rarely encounter hollandaise sauce.  Until I made it myself, I never even bothered to find out that the thick yellow sauce was made of egg yolks, butter, and lemon.  There I was, thinking that I was the unhealthy one eating a cake made in a pan and then dousing it with maple syrup (funny how we justify eating huge pancakes by not thinking of them as real cakes), when all along the person sitting across from me was making just as dubious a choice with their eggs slathered in butter-based Hollandaise sauce.  It's a good thing brunch isn't an everyday thing.

For me, brunch isn't brunch without maple syrup.  Despite my proclivity toward carbs, if eggs were more regularly paired with maple, I would show them more love.  This leads me to my creation: maple Hollandaise sauce - a thing of beauty.  Maple Hollandaise sauce tastes just like traditional Hollandaise, but with a distinct maple flavor and a bit milder lemon flavor. Maple Hollandaise makes eggs happy.

But, not just eggs...

As I was preparing my maple Hollandaise for the third time (I had to get it right so Jonathan could get the perfect photo), I happened to be making my dinner - a sweet potato prepared in the microwave.  Yes, this food blogger often has a simple, unadulterated microwaved sweet potato for dinner, sometimes with a bowl of Cheerios on the side.  On a whim, I dipped my sweet potato in the maple Hollandaise sauce.  Screw eggs.  This maple Hollandaise was made for sweet potatoes.  You may already put maple and butter on your sweet potatoes; maple Hollandaise is the same thing but with the thick and satisfying addition of egg yolks.  Have sweet potato and maple Hollandaise for dinner if you like, or fancy up a Fall brunch by serving a sweet potato hash topped with this maple Hollandaise.

Maple Hollandaise Sauce Recipe

How to Crack an Egg + A Giveaway of The Book That Taught Me

I should know how to crack an egg.  Let's look at approximately how many eggs I have cracked just making cupcakes for this blog:

Approximate years of blogging	3
* Number of weeks per year	52
= Approximate number of weeks of blogging	156
Approximate cupcake recipes baked per week	1
* Average number of eggs per cupcake recipe	2
= Approximate number of eggs used per week	2
Approximate number of cupcakes used for weekly blogging (approximate number of eggs used per week * number of weeks blogging)	312
Number of weddings for which I have baked cupcakes	3
* Average number of eggs used per wedding	50
= Approximate number of eggs used for all weddings	150
Approximate number of eggs used for cupcakes on this blog (approximate number of eggs used for weekly blogging + approximate number of eggs used for weddings)	462

I know that all of that math was a bit geeky. But, it only seems appropriate since my free review copy of Cooking for Geeks is where I learned how to crack an egg.

It turns out that I cracked all 462 of those eggs incorrectly - my skills with eggs weren't all they were cracked up to be.  Way too often, I found myself playing the game of "Try to remove the eggshell bit from the cracked egg" (the baking version of the kid's game Operation). 

So what's the trick to the perfect crack?