The Egg Conundrum and Chocolate Mousse Torte
Before Hawaii: a story and recipe from The Baking Wizard!
The Size of the Egg Matters.
Sizes of egg yolks and egg whites can vary widely. Too large a difference may cause recipes to fail. For best results weigh whites and yolks and multiply by the number called for in the recipe.
What is going on with chicken eggs? What you see here is a perfectly fresh egg with a nice high yolk and well-defined egg white. But not all eggs are created equal. I’m talking about chicken eggs and specifically about the amount of yolk and white. Depending on how the hens are fed, the size and color of the yolk can range all over the place. In a standard Grade AA large egg, the yolk is supposed to weigh 18 grams, a bit more that 0.6 ounce. Keep in mind that the yolk is designed to nourish the embryo from fertilization to hatching, about 21 days. The egg white weighs about 30 grams, a tad more than one ounce.
But what I’ve been finding lately is kinda nutso. The yolks are much smaller than they should be and the amount of white is ridiculously large. What I'm talking about are supermarket eggs. Over the past few months I've been buying eggs, including those labeled organic, from different brand name marketers, and I've found the same thing: undersized yolks and larger whites.
Just recently, I decided to make Maida Heatter’s Chocolate Mousse Torte, a classic she created decades ago. Her recipe calls for 8 large eggs, separated into yolks and whites, and beaten separately. So for the heck of it, I compared yolk and white sizes from Costco organic eggs with a dozen I had bought at a local farmers market. When I began cracking the supermarket eggs I noticed something strange: the yolks were visibly smaller than the farmers market eggs. Hmmm, I thought, I’d better weigh these.
As I said earlier, a normal large egg yolk should weigh about 18 grams. The Costco yolks averaged 14 to 15 grams. Yikes! And here is one that weighs 14.5 grams with a bit of thick white, the chalaza, still attached.
Now compare this 14.5 gram yolk with the farmers market yolk below.
Not only is the yolk larger, weighing in at 17.0 grams, it's more orange in color.
I wound up having to use 10 supermarket yolks in the chocolate mousse torte recipe instead of 8. That’s an increase of 25%. And what about the whites? As I separated the yolks from whites, I plopped the whites into a 1-cup glass Pyrex measuring cup and was utterly dumbfounded when just 6 Costco whites reached the 1-cup level. One large egg white weighs about 30 grams and measures about 2 tablespoons. That means eight large egg whites and not six should measure 1 cup! It turns out that the Costco egg whites each weighed close to 40 grams, more than twice the weight of the yolk and a full 1/3 more than a standard white. So for the recipe I was making, I only needed 6 whites, not 8. Had I just used 8 of the Costco organic eggs, the recipe would have been lopsided, it would not have worked, and I would have wasted a lot of money and time.
Weigh Your Eggs
The main lesson from all of this is that you should always weigh your ingredients. You can find the weight of just about anything you’re coking or baking online. So arm yourself with a scale and you’ll always be safe.
I know it looks as though I’m dissing Costco organic eggs. Not so. Those eggs are perfectly fine to cook for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, where the sizes of a white or yolk are not critical for success. It’s only in baking that you have to be on guard, and any brand you buy may fall short. But a kitchen scale will always allow you to make things just right!
Here's a slice of light, airy, ethereal, chocolate mousse torte.
As for making Maida Heatter's Chocolate Mousse Torte if you don't have a scale, please read on.
How to Measure Eggs Without a Scale.
Back in 1972 (my goodness, that seems like a century ago!), The New York times published Maida Heatter’s now classic dessert, Chocolate Mousse Torte. One definition of a torte is a sweet cake or tart. Maida’s dessert is neither. Yes, it starts out as a chocolate mousse. But she bakes half the mousse in a pie plate to form a tender cakey layer that rises in the oven then sinks as it cools to form a shell for the remaining mousse. Brilliant! To serve the mousse she piles on lightly sweetened whipped cream and sprinkles shaved or grated chocolate on top.
What you can expect? An ethereal three-layered chocolate and cream cloud.
About the chocolate. When Maida first published her recipe the variety of quality chocolate with super high cocoa content didn't exist. She used semisweet chocolate, which has at least 35% pure chocolate with added cocoa butter and sugar. The terrific dark chocolates we have today sport 70% or more pure chocolate. These make great eating, but they’re not the best choice for chocolate mousse torte because the baked mousse hardly sinks at all. I’ve used chocolate labeled between 50% and 55% with excellent results.
Now about the eggs. No scale, no problem. Eight large egg whites should measure 1 liquid cup, or 8 ounces, and eight egg yolks half that, or 1/2 cup. That's it! If you prefer weights, we can speak metric. One large egg white is 30 grams and one yolk 18 grams. For any recipe, just multiply and weigh what you need.
Chocolate Mousse Torte is a great choice for dessert on Valentine’s Day (oops! missed it by a day) or any day. Really. And any leftovers will extend the romance for an extra day or two. So how great is that?