Soufflé isn’t a very popular dessert!.. I wonder
why!!.. Its so yummy, so tempting and looks ever so stylish..
A soufflé is a French dish, which can be either
savory or sweet. The word soufflé is a past participle for souffler, which
means “to blow up” or “to puff up”.
A soufflé has 2 parts:
1.
A pastry cream,
which gives the dish its flavor
2. Egg whites to provide a lift
Only drawback about it is that you cannot store it,
it has to be consumed within 15 minutes after cooking or else it will deflate
and become very dense (but it will still taste divine cause nothing can go
wrong when there’s chocolate!!)
Serves: 3
Ingredients
- 3 tblsp unsalted butter -for greasing
- ½ tblsp unsalted butter – room temperature
- 1/4th cup caster sugar –for coating
- ½ cup + 1/8th cup whole fat milk
- 2 egg yolks
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tblsp corn flour
- ½ tblsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- Pinch of salt
- 56 grams of cooking chocolate (I used 10 grams of
milk chocolate and 46 grams of 45% cocoa dark chocolate) – finely chopped
- 4 egg whites
- 2 tblsp icing /confectioners sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 cups of lukewarm water
Method
-Grease 3 ramekin moulds lightly with butter using a
pastry brush. Pop it in the fridge for 5 mins and the grease it again with
butter using the brush in upwards strokes on the sides (this helps it to rise
evenly).
-Take whole milk, egg yolks, granulated sugar in a
heavy bottomed pan. Take 2 spoons of milk from the pan and add corn flour in it
and mix it until no lumps. Add these 2 spoons of milk in the pan again (do not
add the corn flour directly in the full quantity milk, it will lead to a lot of
lumps and removing those lumps can be tedious!)
-Add cocoa powder and salt in the pan. Using a whisk
cook the mixture on low heat. Stir continuously, letting the eggs and corn
flour cook. Make sure there are no lumps. Bring it to 1 boil for final cooking.
Add the chopped chocolate and let it melt with the mixture’s heat. Then using a
spatula, fold in the chocolate, add butter and vanilla essence and fold. At
this stage the pastry cream will look like a mousse.
-In order to cool the pastry cream, take a bowl of
ice water and place the pastry cream pan on it and make sure not to fill too
much water in the bowl beneath. Using a spatula, stir at regular interval for 5
mins or until cools down. Keep it aside for a while. You can refrigerate this
pastry for 2 hours before making the egg whites. After you remove it from the
fridge, loosen it with a spatula
-For the egg whites, take a dry bowl, add the egg
whites, using an electric beater, beat the whites until little foamy, keep
beating the mix and add 1 tblsp of confectioners sugar at a time!. Beat until
shiny and stiff peaks formed
-Add a little egg white to the pastry cream and whisk
rigorously, this will help loosen the mixture and helps folding the rest of the
whites without loosing too much air from the whites
-Fold in half of the remaining whites and fold in
very gently in a cut-and-fold movement. Add the rest of the egg whites and fold
in until the egg whites disappear.
Pre heat the oven at 190deg c. and place a deep tray
on the second last shelf in the oven
-Take the ramekin moulds, coat it with caster sugar
right up to the top edge of the mould. Pour in the soufflé mix evenly in the
mould leaving 3 cm on the top. Try to flatten the top with a palette knife.
-This is an important step, with your thumb, clean
the edges on the top so that the soufflé rises properly.
-At this stage, you can cool the mixture for 2 hours
before baking or when you are ready to serve.
-Bake it at 190 deg c in a deep dish and pour 1 cup of lukewarm water.Bake it for 30 mins or until insert a
toothpick only till half the mould and the toothpick is just wet on the edge!
-Dust it with icing sugar, or make an incision and
add ice cream or hot chocolate sauce and serve immediately!!
Happy Baking!!
