Update - Frozen Eggs

A couple weeks ago I froze a dozen eggs to preserve them for the winter. The eggs were found inside a large hay bin in the barn. We had no idea how long the eggs had been there, thankfully it's been cold outside; I decided that we should do more than just put the in the fridge with the fresh eggs. So on the advice of a coworker, I froze them - two per custard dish, yolks and all. Yesterday was the first time I thawed and used some.

I had forgotten until Wednesday morning that I'd need 4 eggs for the pumpkin pie. I do have 4 fresh eggs in the fridge, but this was an opportunity to test the freezing-eggs idea. I took out two custard dishes with two eggs each and put them in the sink with a couple inches of water. Within an hour the eggs were thawed, but weird. The yolks, while no longer frozen, weren't runny like normal yolks, they were more solid-ish. Usually, when you break the yolk with a spoon it spreads out. These once-frozen-now-thawed yolks kind of broke apart. Thankfully I had to use a hand mixer to beat the eggs anyway. The yolks were broken up into bizzillions of little pieces. The white were plenty runny and mixed in easily.

The other thing that threw me about the thawed eggs was the color of the yolks. Our chickens are free-range and dine on bugs, grasses, anything out in the yard, so their yolks are a brilliant yellow-orange color. The eggs went into the freezer with that bright color but they came out pale yellow with darkish, brownish spots - like bruises. They also smelled like frozen eggs, if that makes any sense.

At that point Wednesday morning, with non-runny, discolored, pale, "smelly" eggs I was starting to question whether they would work at all for baking. But I decided to press on with the experiment. I added the pumpkin, canned milk and spices and poured the filling into the pie crusts. Into the oven they went.

The pies baked up nicely. Good color, good consistency. The height of the pie seemed a little low, but it could be because I was 1/3 cup short on canned milk and substituted regular milk. Thursday we heated up the pie and served it after dinner. The flavor was great. My grandma said it was the wonderful. Jordan went back for seconds. No one knew or would have guessed the eggs were frozen.

We also used the frozen eggs in the potato rolls and those turned out great too. So I guess freezing eggs, thawing them and using in baked goods works out well. Next summer, when we have more eggs then we can handle, I'll freeze a bunch.