What are "baking eggs"?

[SparkyUK]

Bought some "baking eggs" at Sainsbury's this week as they were cheaper than the own-brand ones for equivalent (large, free range) and were much fresher as well. I'm not using them for baking but am still perplexed about what on earth that means. Surely an egg is an egg, no?

Still confused.

Purely marketing surely - so you but their brand. Differentiating an "Egg" is pretty difficult, so you have Baking Egg's, Happy Egg's etc. but everyone still just buys the cheapest free range ones.

I thought that as an egg got older it was less suitable for eating for breakfast and more suitable for baking.

Could it just be a way of saying "a bit old"?

It's just odd as they were so much cheaper than the others (£1.29 for 6 large eggs rather than £1.80).

I don't think they are old. Just looked and they have a best before October 29th and I bought them October 8th. That's a pretty fresh egg here abouts at least.

it'll be a ploy, next week they'll have shot up by 50p

I think it's a clever marketing ploy.

Most baking recipies call for a UK medium egg iirc. So 3 eggs means three medium.

Baking Eggs are simply medium eggs, but it means you get "perfect cakes every time" simply because you aren't fucking up your quantitys.

Or I could be over thinking this.

just checked out the rest of the website

sexist shite it is...i suggest a boycott tbh

They will increase in price, by them you will think you can only bake with 'baking eggs'.

They come in "pretty pink cartons"? WTAF? And egg is an egg is an egg. I don't bloody well care about sizes. I buy my eggs from a farm shop. Sometimes they have poo or feathers stuck to them. They are all different sizes and I have never yet fucked up a cake due to egg size. Burning it because someone needed a bottom wipe, forgetting to put the sugar in, forgetting the flour on one memorable occasion yes but never has egg size been a problem.

Have seen it all now. Trying to suggest that eggs in a silly pink box are vintage-y and cupcake-y...how patronising.

Indith.

It's the mutant ginormous eggs you can only get in supermarkets I'm on about in referring to large eggs. It's the only reason I can come up with that justifies them selling normal eggs under such a ridiculous concept.

Back before weights and measures and uniformity an egg that size was fairly unusual and not exactly fab as it usually meant loads of egg white.

Baking eggs afaik are marketed purely on the basis they make your cakes nicer. And they make your cakes nicer because they look like eggs that would be sold in Cath Kidtson flowery shit type shops.

I also once forgot about about the flour

i think its similar to buying baking potatoes

you can of course bake any correct size potatoe wether it says baking on the packet or not

my sister purchased round tomatoes from tesco a few years ago (rather than square one, or octogan ones i guess?)

I buy these, because they are the cheapest free range medium eggs that Sainsbury's sell. (in a half dozen box, I think they do a box of fifteen that works out cheaper per egg, but I only buy them if I'm doing lots of baking.)
I had a conversation about them with the delivery driver once, she hadn't bought them because she doesn't bake, but they're just eggs in a pink box instead of a grey/brown box.

The company sells the same big eggs in blue boxes of 12 (mansize??) with 'Big and British' in suitably butch writing

Buy whichever are cheapest.

Mary Berry wants large eggs in her recipes though, so I always need to use more medium eggs or go out and get large ones, not that I am going to buy 'Baking Eggs' though.

I started a thread like this a little while ago. Never really did find out but we ate them and lived to tell the tale :o

a quick google shows about 8 different forums with the same question on carrying on months!

and they're large, not medium.

maybe she's a sole trader who has a lot of hens and doesn't want the profit.

btw, flightsofancy says their best selling egg boxes are the pink ones. they look more "homegrown" than the grey, yellow. green and blue ones (the blue ones look awful )

Nah, it's a big egg packing company: Stonegate - they have all different egg brands.

I have been buying the pink boxed eggs for months, they are always cheaper, they are always on the top shelf too. A few times I pointed them out to other customers next to me buying half a dozen eggs as they are cheaper. They are fine to eat like a normal egg.

ah.
not so cute then.

i don't buy eggs.

(we also box ours in pink boxes though)

The best eggs for baking are duck eggs. Weigh them first, especially when making say a victoria sponge. Say you are using 2 eggs, weigh them and use the same weight in flour butter and sugar.

*sandwich.

yes, i agree - duck eggs are sublime

I buy them because they are cheaper, obviously being a female I am also terribly drawn to them for the pink box.

I have been monitoring the kerfuffle on Baking Eggs for some while now. I must say that despite the lovely pink box used by this particular brand its still unfair to label these lovely larger eggs as baking eggs only. i have cooked some lovely Omelettes with Ella Valentines.

In the same way eggs from younger chickens are called 'Pullet Eggs' which are usually smaller and have a thinner shell, 'Baking Eggs' tend to come from older hens and are often larger and can have a thicker shell. The egg white can also be grainier and therefore less attractive to eat hence being used for baking.