Chocolate Soufflè Attempts 1 & 2

This time I tried to make chocolate soufflè. My first attempt wasn’t too pretty at all, I tried another Tasty recipe. I don’t have anything against them, I love watching their videos, but, every time I try to make the recipe, it never turns out how it does in the video. In the spirit of this blog, I’m still going to show my fail of a first attempt and the success that was my second attempt. Now onto the first try.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups milk
12 ounces semi sweet chocolate – chopped
6 eggs, separated
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F then place one of the oven racks on the bottom of the oven and remove the other one. Then, grease the soufflè dish and pour in 1/4 cup of the sugar on the bottom and tilt the dish until it’s evenly coated and dump out the excess. Set the soufflè dish aside for now. A 1 1/2 – 2 quart soufflè dish is best for this recipe. I used a 2 quart dish, since it’s my only soufflè dish – so far.

In a saucepan over medium heat scald the milk. Scalding means to bring the milk to just under a boil. You’ll know you’ve scalded the milk correctly when you start to see a lot of little bubbles around the edges of the pan, it should look like the picture below.

If you look really close, you can see all the little bubbles forming around the edges. That is where you want your milk to be. Now it’s time to add the chopped chocolate and mix everything together until smooth and no pieces of chocolate remain. Set the chocolate milk mix aside to cool to slightly.

While the chocolate milk mix cools a little bit, in a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, 1/4 cup sugar, flour, salt, and vanilla until combined.

Once everything is combined it’s going to be a little bit thick, thanks to the flour. When you’re done,the egg mixture should look like this:

Next, take 1/2 cup of the chocolate milk mix,

and add it to the egg yolk mixture slowly, while whisking constantly to avoid scrambling the eggs.

Return the pan with the rest of the chocolate milk mixture to the stove over medium heat and add the egg yolk mixture, whisking constantly until thick.

It should look like this when it’s done (essentially we just made chocolate pastry cream). Now just pour this into a large bowl and cover with a layer of plastic wrap. Be sure to press the plastic wrap over the surface to prevent a skin from forming while the cream sets up in the fridge.

Leave this in the fridge for 30 minutes; in the meantime get the egg whites, remaining 1/4 cup of sugar and cream tartar.

In the bowl of your trusty stand mixer (as always, a hand mixer works just as well, but might take longer), add the egg whites and cream of tartar then whip the egg whites until they turn opaque and are just starting to leave trails (when you lift the beaters, the egg whites should be falling in ribbons), now gradually add the sugar to the egg whites. I like to count to twenty in my head in between additions of the sugar to make sure all of the sugar is well incorporated before adding more. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Now it’s time to fold the meringue into the pastry cream.

Fold the meringue into the chocolate in thirds, scraping the bottom of the bowl and folding the mixture over itself turning the bowl a 1/4 turn each time so as to not deflate the meringue. the final batter should look like the picture below when all of the meringue has been folded in.

Pour the batter into the prepared ramekin and smooth out the top. Then run your thumb around the outer edge between the dish and the batter to make a border.

Drop the oven temperature to 375 degrees F and immediately put the soufflè in. Bake for 45 minutes, until the soufflè has risen over the dish (which mine didn’t.) Do not open the oven while the soufflè is baking or you risk it falling. You don’t want to let all the heat inside of the oven out.

When I took mine out, this is what it looked like:

Looks good doesn’t it? From the outside, yes it does, but looks can be deceiving. The inside was not even fully baked and once I went to take a piece out the inside started to separate leaving a puddle of liquid just hanging out in the bottom of the ramekin. I didn’t take pictures of that when I know I should’ve, but I was more focused on what went wrong, when, and how to fix it, which brought me to the conclusion that I should just try a different recipe and see what happens with that one. Which brings us to my second more successful attempt.

Attempt #2

For this one I tried using a soufflè recipe from Taste of Home, just to see how this one turned out. Let’s just say it looked and tasted a lot better than my first one. Now onto the recipe!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate (I used semi-sweet since that’s what I had on hand, it still tasted good)
3 tbsp butter
4 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 2 quart soufflè dish then set aside.

In a large saucepan, combine sugar, cream of tartar, and salt. Add the milk and bring the mixture to a boil, whisk constantly for 2 minutes or until thickened.

Add the butter and chocolate, whisk until both are completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat and add 1/3 cup to the egg yolks stirring constantly so the egg yolks won’t scramble.

Once both of these are combined, it’s time to add the egg yolks and chocolate back to the rest of the chocolate mixture, then return the pan to the stove whisking constantly until it’s all evenly combined. Remove from the heat, stir in the vanilla and cool completely. I stuck mine in the fridge for 15 minutes to jumpstart the process a little bit. While the chocolate mixture is cooling, whip the egg whites and cream of tartar

in the bowl of a stand mixer until stiff peaks form. Then it’s time to fold the meringue into the chocolate mixture.

Fold the meringue into the chocolate in thirds, scraping from the bottom and folding the mixture over itself, so you don’t risk deflating the meringue.

Even with the meringue incorporated, the batter for this one is still runny, so don’t worry if yours is runny. Mine was and it still came out amazing.

Pour the batter into the prepared dish and bake for 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remember, do not open that oven door!