Chocolate Souffle

Souffle? Yes, a dear friend took me to a tiny Thai restaurant on Yonge and Sheppard, and it was there that I had a taste of my first Chocolate AND Vanilla soufflé. We shared, I didn’t eat all of it myself!... Your probably wondering why a Thai restaurant is serving soufflé, I don’t know either but it was GOOD.  Unfortunately this was my first time having soufflé, so I can’t compare it to any other.  I was determined to make it at home, but I have heard several horrible myths on how difficult it is to make them... For example, soufflé can easily deflate when you take it out of the oven, they may not “puff” up in the oven, or even spill over.  I began my research looking through online recipes, compared several methods and watched a few youtube videos.  I was convinced that Chef Gordon Ramsay had the easiest and reliable recipe. 

I created Ramsay’s Passion fruit & Banana soufflé from Youtube.  The problem was that I don’t like bananas and I can’t find Passion fruit this time of the year... so I looked in my pantry, I noticed chocolate chips, done!  Chocolate soufflé was what I made!

I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe, but I did make a few minor changes with the ingredients. 

 

Yield 6

Equipments:

Ramekins

Pastry brush

Electric mixer 

Ingredients: 

Pastry Cream:

150 ml milk

100 ml cream

3 egg yolks

3 ½ tablespoon sugar

1 ½ tablespoon flour

1 cup chocolate chips

Egg whites:

6 egg whites- Room temperature

3 tablespoon sugar

Garnishes:

Side of icecream

Dusting of powdered sugar

Ramekin preparations:

1.        With room temperature butter, use a pastry brush and cover the entire inside of ramekins with butter

2.       Pour a tablespoon of sugar into the buttered ramekins and roll the sugar around to completely cover the ramekin. 

Pastry cream

3.       Put ramekins into fridge

Directions:

1.       Warm cream, and milk on stove.  Don’t let boil

2.       In a bowl, add egg yolks and sugar, whisk together

3.       Add flour to eggs and sugar mixture, and whisk together

4.       Pour half the hot mixture into the egg and flour mixture and whisk quickly.  No lumps

Slowly add sugar

5.       Pour the mixture from the bowl back to the pot of hot milk and whisk quickly

6.       Turn on the heat, medium, and continue whisking till the mixture is THICK, turn stove off and put aside to cool 

7.       In the microwave, warm white chocolate chips till all melted.

8.       Pour melted white chocolate to the COOLED pastry cream and mix together

9.       In an electric mixer, whisk 6 egg white

10.   When the egg whites begins to turn white, SLOWLY add sugar

This is what stiff peaks look like!

11.   Whisk till stiff peaks

12.   Add half of the whipped egg whites to the cooled pastry cream and slowly combined

13.   Add the remaining half of the egg whites and fold everything together.  CAREFULLY so that it doesn’t lose volume.  Don’t over mix!

14.   Pour into ramekins, fill it to the top!

15.   Bake for 15 mins

16.   SERVE IMMEDIATELY!

  

Fill to the top

Not too warm, don't want to cook the eggs!

 

Note: Room temperature egg whites will whip up fluffier and higher volume. 

Tip: If you forget to leave your eggs out to room temperature, just put them warm water.  

 

This may seem complicated, but just watch Gordon do it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4MewNvc5Y  and you will see that it’s pretty easy and fast to do!  

This was such a success, warm custardy centers and crispy outsides..... Next time I think I will make White Chocolate Vanilla Bean Souffle!

 Stay Tuned!