CHICAGO, IL—When recipes call for eggs, they never specify what kind to use, now do they? I mean, I don't think there would be any major difference in a loaf of bread if you used chicken eggs, duck eggs, platypus eggs, or even fish eggs. I mean, we're allowed to use all kinds of milk right? Goat milk and cow milk and llama milk really aren't all that different when you get down to it. So what's the big deal with eggs?
Suppose it's a cozy Sunday afternoon and you're at home with your family. The dog's asleep peacefully in the living room for once instead of barking at something, the kids are playing nice and nobody's bleeding or screaming, and your spouse just laid down for a nap. You, being the considerate parent and partner that you have been since marriage counseling and the threat of divorce, decide to make cookies for everyone. But lo, your attempts to get ahead in the game of niceties is dashed by the fact that you're out of eggs.
This is a problem. You can't ask your "perfect" neighbors to borrow any eggs lest you give them one more thing to hold over you, like the tools you borrowed and returned broken. Your surprise – not to mention your marriage – might be ruined if you run to the store and your spouse wakes up while you're gone, rushing to conclusions again. But you can't make a batch of grandma's best chocolate chip cookies without eggs. Or can you?
The realization approaches systematically, like a chain of dominoes: Cookies require eggs. You have eggs in your closet in preparation for Easter. The little brats don't know about the eggs and your wife probably wouldn't notice a few missing. You can use your candy eggs to make the cookies. It's a brilliant idea! Making a treat using another treat? That's how people came up with trifles, which are freaking delicious! And heck, you probably don't even need to worry about fishing the pieces of shell out if it's all just chocolate anyway!
Half-convulsing with the rapture of treading in undiscovered territory, you silently creep to your bedroom closet and retrieve some of the precious eggs. Carefully cradling these gems in the semidarkness of the room, you allow a cunning grin, then steal back into the kitchen to make the dough. Your creation completed, you reverently place it in the oven and eagerly await the final moment of triumph. You can almost taste the victory of your own ingenuity over the feebleness of the human condition, you have transcended mere mortality to the realm of legends!
But when the moment arrives and you free what was to be your masterpiece from the oven, not all is as you had hoped. The perfectly-textured discs you expected to summon from your childhood are instead fragile, cracker-like things. The immaculately-browned pucks are a sickly white. This, your hour of greatest triumph, has become your worst defeat. Like Icarus, you flew too close to the sun and fall victim to crushing weight of your own hubris. A single tear falls, embodying the hope that once you felt.
In a last desperate gambit, you shovel these cookie abominations into a bag to take to work. No doubt those swine ridiculed the "poor excuse for cookies" that somebody put in the break room. Todd mercilessly criticizes every flaw in them, driving the icy dagger further into your broken heart. If you understand the scenario that I have described, then you are a genius whose ingenuity and flair are vastly underappreciated by those around you, especially the stupid marriage counselor. I, of course, would never be so "stupid" as to ruin a good batch of cookies with some Cadbury eggs. But for those of you with the courage to dream, I say: 3/5 would recommend for consumption, but do not substitute for eggs in baked goods.