Safe Eggs

I was recently invited to attend an event showcasing Safe Choice Pasteurized Eggs (www.safeeggs.com).

We were greeted by this lovely display of cupcakes that we later got to try…

So, about the eggs. They’re pasteurized by being slowly heated in a gentle water bath, which kills off all bad bacteria and makes it safe to eat raw. I don’t tend to eat raw eggs much – not like this, in a bowl – but I do eat a lot of raw eggs in other manners: cookie dough, cake batter, and I love carbonara, raw egg in my hot pot dipping sauce, plus I LOVE a raw yolk (soft boiled eggs, poached, sunny side up – love it all). While my immune system is generally up to snuff so I don’t often worry about salmonella poisoning, long time readers do know that I’ve caught a bad case here and there, and there is almost nothing more disgusting than that. Plus, I have two young nephews now, and I want nothing more than to share with them the love of raw yolk, but their mom is a little paranoid about bacteria (and who can blame her?) and sickness related to undercooked food items.  Enter: pasteurized eggs.  Since the eggs have been heated, there is almost zero chance of getting sick from salmonella. I can now share these favorite treats with my nephews… first up, soft boiled eggs!

But… who is that? OMG, it’s Rose Levy Berenbaum, author of The Cake Bible (affiliate link). She demonstrated a few cakes and a buttercream frosting, showing us that now we didn’t need to be afraid of raw egg anymore at all. Lovely – she is the nicest woman, plus she was totally a hoot’n’holler, telling us all sorts of funny stories.

Then we got to eat the cupcakes. Okay, I’m not that big on buttercream – it tastes like eating a big stick of butter, and I’m just not that girl anymore (yes, anymore!) – but the cupcake itself was incredible. It had this crust on top (that you can’t see) that was remarkable in its texture, but then revealed a very moist interior with a fine crumb. The cupcake didn’t need but a swipe of buttercream, so I wiped a lot of it off. However, other women around me apparently love buttercream and were raving about it. And I didn’t get sick from the raw egg in it.

Then Ms. Beranbaum showed us a quick and easy way to decorate a cake with walnuts. Well, she makes it look quick and easy, I’m sure it wouldn’t be so easy if I were doing it, haha.

So we ate more cake. And again, the crust on this, along with the delicious crunch of the walnuts and the moist cake, just amazing. I really do need to get my hands on a copy of her book – I might actually be able to bake cakes if I followed her very precise directions!

I will definitely be stocking these eggs – not for me, but for my nephews – so I can share the yellow love that is a raw yolk popped over my bacon, my corned beef hash, my anything. Plus for my mother who is getting older and still loves a sunny side up egg but probably shouldn’t take those risks with her health (and will yell at me for writing that when she sees this…).  🙂

Thanks to the Safe Eggs people, who invited me to enjoy this event and sent me home with a half dozen Safe Eggs to play with (expect possible recipes in the very near future… possibly… dare I say it? … carbonara!)! I was under no obligation to post about this event, positively or negatively, and received no compensation to do so.

Eat eggs safely and happily!