Hard-Baked Eggs

I probably should have posted this before Easter, but I really wanted to post the Piña Colada Pie.  Think of it as getting a head start on your first picnic or barbecue of the year, when the egg salads and deviled eggs begin to emerge.

Hard-boiling eggs for Passover and Easter is really a labor of love.  That's a lot of eggs to put in a pot.  Then it takes forever to come to a boil, and 15 minutes more to sit and cook.  By then, you've forgotten you were making eggs and they're really hard.

Alton Brown has a solution.  You can bake them in a mini-muffin tin when you have a boatload to do.  I just got a new one for my birthday, so I figured I could take the risk with my old one, in case an egg exploded in it and ruined the pan.  One did crack open considerably, but didn't ooze out.

Any number of eggs
bowl of ice water

1.  Preheat oven to 325º.  Place eggs, wide side down, in mini-muffin tin.

2.  Place tin in middle rack setting of oven and cook for 30 minutes.

3.  As soon as timer goes off, place eggs in ice water.  If you can handle them a moment, tap the bottoms to crack them at the air pocket, so water can seep in and they will be easier to peel.

4.  When eggs are cool enough to handle, peel and return to ice water to finish cooling.  Mine came out a slightly yellow color, and all of the eggs had what looked like a burn mark where the shell touched the side of the muffin pan.  I don't know if that means I cooked them too long, or if it always happens.  If not peeling eggs, just leave them in the ice water until they are cool enough to decorate or store in the fridge.

Difficulty rating  π