Egg Sizes for Cakes

Asked by qwertyness. Answered on 22nd May 2013

Full question

Hello, I am a bit confused as to what size eggs i should use for the flourless chocolate cakes? The website ingredients state 'medium eggs' but the Nigella cookbooks I have generally say to use 'large eggs'. I am using UK sized eggs. Which is correct? Many thanks.

Our answer

As far as we are aware the recipes for flourless chocolate cakes on Nigella's own website - Chocolate Cloud Cake, Flourless Chocolate Lime Cake and Christmas Spiced Chocolate Cake - all list large eggs in their ingredients, as do their related books. Some external websites that carry Nigella's recipes state just "eggs" in the ingredients, but you should also use UK large eggs in these recipes and Nigella's books usually state in the introduction the appropriate egg size to be used in recipes (again for the UK this is large size eggs).

Many years ago the UK changed its old system of egg sizes to the standard E.U.-wide system. In this system UK large eggs are defined as having a weight of 63-73g (this is the whole egg, including the shell). For more information on sizes please see the UK egg information website (link below).

http://www.egginfo.co.uk/basic/egg-sizes