Thursday, March 18, 2010

Soufflés

I am sure that most of you have had a soufflé before.  Light and airy yet rish in flavor, these egg-based desserts are like a slice of heaven.  Although chocolate is by far the most popular soufflé flavor worldwide, there are several options when it comes to which kind of soufflé to make.  Like crepes, soufflés can be either savory or sweet, the latter being the more common of the two types.

In honor of some special dinner guests, I attempted a Soufflé au café (Coffee soufflé) accompanied by a dark chocolate sauce. I had a brilliant idea to bake them in individual serving dishes using coffee mugs.  It would have been pretty cute as the puffed up soufflé would ressemble a foamy latte.  HOWEVER, I grossly miscalculated the baking time adjustment (the recipe was to bake in a 6 serving soufflé dish) and took them out of the overn very prematurely.  The soufflés immediately deflated to ressemble a pancake and were slightly undercooked.  Needless to say, they were not edible!

So, I started over. Yes, right there while our guests chatted with us! I was bound and determined to have a WOW factor to the evening.  This time around, I used my 6 serving soufflé dish and it came out quite beautiful. The dark chocolate sauce was sinfully delicious and rich as a backdrop to the light magic of the coffee soufflé.

The coffee soufflé recipe can be found in Julia Child's Mastering the Artof French Cooking. As for the chocolate sauce, I used Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream and simply melted them together and added 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla.