Breakfast and gifts for Mom on Mother’s Day.

On Mother’s Day, many moms will be treated to breakfast in bed. While there are many options for mom’s breakfast, not all of them segue from the kitchen to the bed as seamlessly as eggs. With their being so versatile, eggs can be prepared in countless ways, too, including soft-boiled. Should you think, a soft-boiled egg too common for mom, consider serving it in one of those cute little egg cups. The cups are fun and inexpensive and can transform an ordinary looking egg into something rather highbrow. For some folks, however, satisfactorily preparing soft-boiled eggs remains elusive, with the desired degree of doneness, never achieved. Most soft-boiled egg lovers find a set white and a warm, fluid yolk the ideal – something that can be accomplished assuming that you don’t veer from a precise set of guidelines (see recipe below). Or, you can effortlessly make mom an egg, cooked exactly the way she likes it, with the help of an automatic egg cooker. I must concede that an egg cooker has never been on my radar, but now that I’ve used one (all the eggs pictured in this column were cooked with a Krups egg cooker), I don’t know how I ever did without it. Along with the egg cooker, I also opted to indulge in another first with a Swissmar egg “cracker,” a device that removes the uppermost part of the egg. It does the job it is designed to do, and in those instances where the top of the egg didn’t come off all the way, a pronounced circular indentation in the shell made it a breeze to cleanly finish the job with a small knife. If you can give them up, the egg cooker and egg cracker would make a great gift for mom, as would the fine Harry and David accompaniments seen here, such as preserves, tea cookies, English muffin bread and world-famous Royal Riviera pears.