In addition to hoarding toilet paper, flour, baker's yeast, and canned goods, Americans apparently have been hoarding fresh eggs, pushing prices on eggs higher. Egg prices came close to $5 per dozen in one store in California late last week. Fresh eggs are no where near that price in my area. However, the news also reported that in order to meet the current demand in stores, the inventory that was being held back for the upcoming Easter holiday week were released for consumer purchase in the past couple of weeks. This means that those super deals on eggs may or may not happen in the second week of April, as many of us have become accustomed to over the years.
In addition, as I'm not going out to stores right now, I have limited access to buying more fresh items, such as eggs. So, I've been experimenting with baking without eggs or with half the amount of eggs. This past week, I cooked/baked two items using a half an egg in each recipe, bean burger patties and a batch of oatmeal cookies.
I simply broke the egg into a custard cup and beat it before spooning out about half the beaten egg for the first recipe, then covered and kept the remaining half egg in the fridge until I baked the other recipe. The end products for both recipes turned out well. With the bean burger patties, I didn't alter the recipe in any other way. And with the cookie dough, I added about 1 1/2 tablespoons of milk to make up for the lacking moisture from using only half an egg.
I still have a few dozen fresh eggs in the fridge. I intend to stretch out their use over the course of a couple of months, if possible. In the next week or two, I'll be freezing some of the eggs to further their safe-to-eat life and provide us with eggs for cooking into the weeks of May.
In addition the using half the usual amount of eggs in cooking and baking, I've also been using egg substitutes, such as ground flax seed and a pinch extra of baking powder. Here's a post from a few years ago that outlines which substitute to use based on the function of egg in different recipes.
I hope you're all doing well.
