Chocolate Soufflé

Chocolate Soufflé is one of those desserts you see at fancy restaurants and never even consider the possibility that you could make it on your own. As you dig in, steam escapes and with it wonderful, chocolaty smells. As it turns out, if you have a knowledge of melting chocolate and folding ingredients in, you are on your way to making a delicious soufflé.

I started by melting the chocolate. I went with a bittersweet chocolate but semi-sweet works just as well. I placed the chopped chocolate into a glass bowl and put it over a pot of almost boiling water. You don’t want to burn your chocolate but you want all of the chocolate melted. Once it was smooth, I set it aside and got to work on the egg yolks.

I first combined egg yolks and cream. Then I slowly added the chocolate to the egg mixture. You want to be careful so as not to scramble your eggs while doing this. When they were combined, I added cinnamon and flour. As it turned out, the cinnamon gave the soufflés a nice hint of spice to contrast the sweet chocolate.

Beating the egg whites and sugar was easy and I was left with peaks not unlike snowy mountains. When the whites were beaten, I added half of the mixture to the chocolate and folded it in until combined. Then I added that back to the original bowl of egg whites and folded until I was left with a perfect chocolate soufflé batter. It took a little longer than I thought it would and I worried I had lost some of the air that I had incorporated in earlier but everything went fine.

I poured the batter three-fourths of the way up and was surprised the recipe only made four instead of the six I thought it would. They baked for a while and came out puffed and once I had decorated with confectioners’ sugar, they were complete. They tasted dense and chocolaty just as you would expect from Chocolate Soufflé. Next time, I will be quicker with my chocolate because I waited a tad too long before adding it to my eggs which made it difficult to incorporate the other ingredients into. Otherwise, I think this recipe will be a new favorite for any upcoming events. Give it a try, if you have any comments on the recipe, leave them below. Bon Appetit!