Hi Bold Bakers, I asked you on social media what has been your experience in making souffles
and the words that came up the most were “fearful”, “intimidated”, “scared” and “exploded”.
Well fear no more because I have simplified soufflé making for you, it’s gonna be really
easy and you’re gonna have perfect souffles every time.
The recipe can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com.
Ok the first thing we’re going to do is really important, to prepare your ramekins
correctly.
These are the ramekins that I’m using I’m gonna put a link on my website of where you
can buy these directly.
They are six ounce ramekins and they’re nice and smooth so your soufflé will pop
right up.
So here I have some softened butter and here is what we’re gonna do, generously grease
each ramekin and when I say generous I mean generous.
Each one with butter make sure you go all the way around.
And secondly what you’re gonna do is get a little bit of sugar in there, then just
move the ramekin around and get the sugar coated all over the inside.
And if there’s any excess just tip that out.
So the reason we do this is the sugar and butter will melt and it’ll help your soufflé
glide right up, it won’t be struggling or anything like that so it really will make
a difference.
So do this first and set them to the side.
So our ramekins are done we don’t have to worry about them anymore, the next step is
to make something called the soufflé base or the soufflé sauce.
This is the foundation of your soufflé and it’s really easy to make.
So here I have my saucepan and into that I’m gonna add a little bit of flour and salt.
Now here I have my milk ready to go and my whisk, this is really important, I’m slowly
going to stream in my milk and whisk at the same time.
Now the reason that we’re doing this is because we don’t want any lumps.
So just do it slowly until you kind of have a smooth paste.
Then we’re gonna turn our heat onto a medium low heat and we’re going to add in some
butter.
So continue to whisk and what we’re gonna do here is just continue to cook out this
flour, let it thicken a bit, around 2-3 minutes.
So there you go, as you can see around 2 minutes it starts to thicken up nicely, don’t let
this mix boil or anything like that you want it steadily to come almost to a simmer, you
don’t want to get it too hot.
I’m gonna remove this now from the heat, and I’m just gonna put this here, let it
cool down a little bit and the next thing I’m going to add is the chocolate.
This is bittersweet chocolate around 72%, it’s nice and rich, it’s bitter, it’s
a little bit sweet, it’s a perfect balance for this recipe.
So here’s what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna let that chocolate melt with the heat coming
off of our base and I’ll tell you why I’m doing that, if you over mix chocolate it can
separate, the fat in the chocolate can separate and you end up with a really oily mess, so
unfortunately you can’t really use that if you do it, so just let the chocolate chill
out here, relax, melt by itself and then we’ll stir it in, we’re not gonna use a whisk
anymore we’re gonna use a spatula.
So there you go, I left it for three minutes and as you can see the chocolate melted with
the heat of the base.
This is really great because it means you don’t have to stir it as much which means
it’s less likely to separate.
The over mixing is what separates chocolate which is really unfortunate because there’s
not a lot you can do when that happens, so just try and do it a little bit.
Ok this is looking good so into here I’m gonna add a little bit of vanilla extract,
and room temperature egg yolks, and with a spatula just swiftly fold it in.
Now just like before you don’t want to do this too many times, so just get them in there
and stop.
So a note about your eggs just make sure they’re at room temperature when you go to use them,
so it doesn’t set on your chocolate and also your egg whites will whip up so much
better when you get them to room temperature too.
Ok so that’s looking good.
The good thing about soufflé is that you can make this part, the base, up to three
days in advance which will save you a lot of time if you’re having a dinner party
or just want to make a dessert for yourself pop it into the fridge but before you use
it let it get to room temperature so you can easily fold in your egg whites.
I’m gonna set this over to the side and let this cool off while we get started on
our next step which are the egg whites so we’re almost there.
So while our base is over to the side cooling down we’re going to whip up our egg whites.
Now an important fact about egg whites you have to let them get to room temperature they
whip up so much better when they’re at room temperature, same with the egg yolks as I
mentioned.
So just add that into your bowl.
So our next ingredient is an important one I don’t want you to leave it out and unfortunately
there’s no substitute for it.
It’s cream of tartar.
Now it’s really important because it stabilizes your egg whites and it’ll make sure you
get that lovely big soufflé and it won’t sink.
So just buy it online, I’m gonna put a link on my website, it’s inexpensive and then
you just have it for those few recipes that call for it.
So with a hand mixer or a stand mixer we’re going to whip I tup on medium speed until
it gets nice an foamy.
So I told you that you could make the base for the soufflé in advance you want to do
the egg whites at the very last minute you want to have all of that air, all of that
lovely volume to make sure that you’ve got that killer soufflé . Ok great, now once
this starts to thicken up and hold all of it’s shape, I’m going to turn up my speed
a little bit and I have 2 tablespoons of my sugar from earlier on, and we’re going to
slowly, bit by bit, add that into our eggwhites.
Just a little bit at a time.
Add some in, let it incorporate and then go back again, it won’t take long.
And you can see already the egg whites they get glossier and firmer, and also that’s
the cream of tartar.
Ok so that’s all of our sugar, just give it a good mix around, and there we have it,
there are our egg whites it’s really simple and we have all the components we need now
to make our soufflé so let’s bring them all together.
So I have my soufflé base here cooled down and I put it into a bowl because we’re gonna
use that to fold in our egg whites.
Here is a really important fact about working with egg whites and this applies to whenever
you’re folding in egg whites.
Use a metal, thin edged spoon, don’t use a spatula and I’ll tell you why.
Spatulas are really thick and that’s just going to go through your egg whites and beat
out that lovely air.
This is really thin, nice and smooth, and it’ll glide through your egg whites keeping
all that lovely air in tact, so remember this.
So I’m gonna take a third of my egg whites and use a technique called introducing which
is adding a little bit of one mixture to the other and loosening it up.
By doing this it just makes it easier to add the rest of our egg whites, the chocolate
gets nice and soft and it knows that there’s more coming.
So our base has loosened up so we’re going to add in the rest of our egg whites and then
just continue folding, nice and gently, keeping all those lovely bubbles in tact until there’s
really no big lumps of egg whites any more.
But just make sure not to go too far because you still want all those lovely bubbles.
Ok gorgeous, this is fantastic this is gonna be an amazing soufflé.
This is ready now to go into our ramekins and luckily we already have them done.
So when you’re filling your ramekins, fill them all the way to the top.
And then, with a flat knife or a pallet knife whatever you have, just run it along the top
until it’s lovely smooth and even.
Then just continue with all the rest of your ramekins.
So once you level off the top of your ramekin just go around with your fingers and clean
up the edges because you don’t want bits kind of going over, you want them really nice
and clean.
So this recipe makes six souffles, perfect for a dinner party, I’m just gonna bake
off three right now to show you, but the good thing about it is these can be made in advance
but not that long.
It can be mixed up just like this, ready to go into the oven around an hour in advance,
but we are going to go straight into the oven with these.
So bake your soufflés off in a nice hot oven.
375° F or 190° C for roughly 18 minutes or so.
This is a really really important part, do not open the oven once they go in there, you
want all that heat, everything to stay in there so resist the urge to open the oven.
So the reason I said around 18 minutes is because your oven.
Is different than my oven.
What you’re looking for is a well risen soufflé no wobble in the middle, once that
wobble is gone you can take them out of the oven.
If you take soufflés out too early they can collapse, if you leave them in too long they’re
just not as good.
So really keep an eye on it, I like to look in around the 15 minute mark.
So it’s been 18 minutes I’m gonna pull these guys out of the oven.
Dust them with a little bit of powdered sugar for garnish and serve immediately.
So the beauty of this dessert it’s like a really delicate cake, mixed with a warm
chocolate mousse it is just absolutely delicious.
I know a lot of steps go into making this, but honestly when you get it right, it’s
well worth it.
Don’t forget to go to my website and follow my steps and you will have amazing soufflé
every time.
I’ll see you back here real soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.