I read the eggs chapter of Harold McGee's excellent On Food and Cooking on the train on the way upstate to visit Lisa Friday evening. I've been thinking about eggs all weekend. Lisa and I went hiking in the Catskills yesterday, and on the way home I nearly killed us swerving into a roadside farmers' market, hoping to find farm-fresh eggs. I emerged both alive and successful, so that today I may offer you this Soft-Boiled Egg Cake.

This cake is not made with soft-boiled eggs; it's something of a gag made to resemble its namesake dish. I made two small angel food cakes, hollowed them out, filled them with warm lemon curd, and covered them with whipped cream (well, actually, leftover CoolWhip from a long-forgotten strawberry shortcake experiment, but you get the idea). When you cut it open the lemon curd runs out like the gooey yolk of a soft-boiled egg.

You can use store-bought angel food cake for this, but I originally conceived of the idea as a way to avoid the waste that is typical of recipes that call for only half of a separated egg. The angel food uses the egg whites, while the lemon curd takes care of the yolks.

Recipe: Soft-Boiled Egg Cake

Ingredients:

For the angel-food cake:

• 4 egg whites
  
• 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
  
• 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
  
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  
• 1/3 cup cake flour
  
• pinch salt

For the lemon curd:

• 4 egg yolks
  
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
  
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
  
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
  
• pinch salt

For the "shell":

• 1/2 cup whipped cream (or, if you must, CoolWhip)

In a clean mixing bowl, whisk the egg whites together with the cream of tartar and vanilla extract until foamy. Add half of the confectioners sugar to the egg whites in stages while whisking. Continue whisking until medium peaks form.

Sift the cake flour with the rest of the confectioner's sugar and the salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the egg whites in stages. Pour the batter into small cake molds and bake in a 350 degree oven until a skewer comes out clean; about 15-20 minutes. Cool completely before unmolding.

For the lemon curd, whisk together the egg yolks with the sugar and salt until creamy. Add the lemon zest and juice and cook over a double-boiler until the mixture just starts to thicken. Whisk the butter in by tablespoons over the double-boiler, and continue whisking until the curd thickens to your liking.

Cut the centers out of two angel food cakes and stack them with their wide ends touching. Cover the outside of the cakes, except the top, with the whipped cream, and smooth it out evenly. Pour the warm lemon curd into the top of the cake, cover the hole with the plugs of cake you cut out of the centers, and smooth whipped cream over the top.

When you cut into this cake, if the lemon curd is still warm it will run out onto the plate like a soft-boiled egg yolk. If the lemon curd is chilled, it will simply sit there, but the gimmick is only slightly less amusing. Enjoy.

P.S. - Thanks to Renee at Shiokadelicious for hosting this event.