When you’re baking, it’s not uncommon to come across a recipe that calls for separated eggs. This doesn’t mean you should keep your eggs far away from each other on the counter or in the bowl so they don’t get in a fight. Separating eggs means to separate the yolk from the white. This is a relatively common occurrence in baking, but what is the best way to separate them? Here are a few cake baking instructions from a professional.
- Start with three bowls—one for the egg you’re working with, one for the whites and one for the yolks. You want to be sure to have a bowl for the egg you’re working with so that, if something goes wrong with that egg, you haven’t ruined all the eggs you’ve already done.
- Take an egg and crack it on the edge of the bowl. Make sure the yolk falls into half of the shell, not into the bowl—the half shell will make a perfect yolk-sized bowl.
- Allow the excess white to fall into the bowl.
- Now, pour the yolk out of the shell and into your hand as you hold it over the bowl. You want the yolk to be on top of your fingers, but be sure to keep your fingers closed. Open your fingers slightly to allow all the excess white to come off the yolk. You may need to shake your hand a bit or jiggle your fingers to loosen the white from the yolk. Be gentle, though, as you do not want to break the yolk.
- Put the yolk in one bowl and, after inspecting it and removing any shell pieces that may have fallen in, pour the whites into the other bowl.
As we mentioned, you want to be sure to have a bowl for the egg you’re working with and two other bowls, one for the whites and one for the yolks. This is because several things might happen with the egg you’re working on and you don’t want that one egg to ruin any others you may have already separated. This is important in your cake baking instructions when taking cake baking classes online.
- Broken yolk – if you accidentally break a yolk, it’s not the end of the world—unless you break it into a big bowl of whites you’ve already separated. Then you have to pour out the whole bowl of ruined whites and separate more eggs to replace the ruined ones.
- Shell pieces – it’s much easier to fish a piece of shell out of a bowl with just one white in it than it is to try and get that tiny piece out of a bowl full of egg whites. If you drop a piece of shell into the bowl, don’t worry about it—just use half of the shell as a magnet to get the piece out.
- Blood in the yolk – while blood may not be harmful or unhealthy, it isn’t very attractive. If blood from the yolk gets into the whites, it can be even more unattractive because it will be more visible. It’s really up to you, but most bakers choose to discard bloody eggs. Just follow these simple cake baking instructions when taking cake baking classes online as you’ll get great results every time.
Chef Susan Holtz has taught professional Cake Art and baking for over 30 years. She has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Home and Garden magazine, and on Fox News Television. If you want to learn more about cake art visit: BakingandCakeArt.com
