You can bake that s%&#: Leftover egg yolks

Time to bake like a Portuguese nun

Baking buds, hello! Last week, we talked about turning leftover egg whites into dessert. This week, the yolk is in the hot seat. I have learned the hard way that adding ever more yolks to a Frozen Deli Container of Yolk Doom is no way to prevent food waste. So I tracked down sane storage tips, and turned to two bakers in the Pale Blue Tart community for their go-to recipe ideas when yolks abound. Their ideas revealed a little-known truth: Sometimes the most reasonable climate solution is to bake like a Portuguese nun. 

Upper right: The famous pastéis de nata, which I tried for the first time in Lisbon two years ago

Storing egg yolks requires a lil TLC

As with egg whites, yolks have a short shelf life — hence the food waste risk. They also have a tendency to dry out and gellify in the fridge and freezer (yum!), unless you have a couple crafty tricks up your sleeve.

If you’re refrigerating them, pour a little water on top of (unbroken) yolks to prevent them from drying out, then drain the water before using. Store yolks in the fridge for up to two days, says the American Egg Board (though the daredevils over at the USDA say up to four).

Freezing yolks can do texturally questionable things too, but there’s a solution. Rose Levy Berenbaum, aka Mother, advises in The Cake Bible to “stir in half a teaspoon of sugar per yolk” before freezing, then “subtract that amount of sugar from the recipe” you intend to use. That works best for a sweet recipe, of course. If you intend to use the yolks in a savory recipe (lol, as if), King Arthur Baking recommends replacing the sugar with a pinch of salt, which keeps them thin and liquidy just as effectively.

As with egg whites, frozen yolks are best thawed gently in the fridge overnight and — if you’ve stored a few in the same container — weighed before adding to a recipe to be sure you have the right amount. One large egg yolk weighs about 16g, or about 18g if you’ve added half a teaspoon of sugar.

Jump into action and bake like a Portuguese nun

Since storing spare egg yolks is slightly annoying, my new motto when I have extras on hand is to jump into action and bake like a Portuguese nun. 

Those gals were the yolk-use OGs, creating a whole new family of desserts around extra yolks called doces conventuais. Dressler Parsons, the professional baker and food history buff behind the Regenerative Baking podcast, told me that Portuguese nuns and monks used “egg whites to starch their habits/clarify wine/etc, ending up with a glut of egg yolks, which is why monasteries and convents in Portugal went so heavy on custard-related desserts.” Pastéis de nata is the most famous, but there are plenty of others, like ovos moles de Aveiro and pastéis de Tentúgal.

Aside from a bevy of recipes, those nunfolk gave us a creative anchor when yolks need using: custard. 

Baker Kaitlin Navarro at Butter and Crumble, Dressler, and I pooled our custard-adjacent standbys, and I sorted them by time. As the nuns said (probably), there’s always a pudding or curd or crème in sight, no matter how busy you are.

Quick (<30 min)

• My pick: This chocolate pudding, served warm for a quick dessert (2 yolks)

• Kaitlin’s pick: Lemon curd, or lime or passionfruit! (4 yolks)

Middling (<2h)

• My pick: Vanilla crème brulée, with or without a torch (5-6 yolks)

• My pick for when I finally successfully defrost my Frozen Deli Container of Yolk Doom: Rhubarb custard brulée (17 yolks)

Longer (2h+ including cooling)

• My forever pick: Key lime pie (4 yolks) 

• Dressler’s pick: Crème anglaise ice cream (4 yolks)

• Dressler’s convent-core pick: Custard tarts like pastéis de nata (6 yolks)

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An extra helping

• Leave a comment: to share your sweet standby recipes for when egg yolks abound

• Read:

  David Lebovitz
  ’s latest newsletter, which includes an extremely doable extra-egg-whites recipe: his chocolate coconut macaroons

• Listen: to Dressler Parsons’s podcast Regenerative Baking, which tucks all sorts of food-history gems alongside conversations about how to create a climate-friendly bakery of the future

• Nominate a food hero: to the Grist 50 list! If you know somebody doing amazing work on food and climate — egg-related or otherwise —nominate ‘em