Chocolate Souffle

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was picked by Susan of She’s Becoming DoughMessTic. She selected the Chocolate Soufflé! You can visit Susan’s blog for the complete recipe. Most people are probably familiar with soufflé, but I had never made one and I can’t recall eating honest to goodness soufflé before. So this was a new experience for me in more ways than one.

I have to say that I was quite scared to make this week’s recipe. I don’t feel like I am very good at folding egg whites, and that’s the key in a successful soufflé. Only recently have I even been willing to try folding in egg whites and I am getting better at it, but I still don’t have great confidence. I figured that I would give it a try and just not worry about the soufflé being perfect.

This is a very simple recipe, which contains chocolate, sugar, milk, and eggs. I was curious if other soufflé recipes were so simple, and I noticed that many of the other recipes were more complex, including butter and other ingredients. This was a rare Tuesdays with Dorie week in that I didn’t use any butter (except to butter the pan). I go through a lot of butter during a typical week!

The soufflé came together quite easily. I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t think that I got the egg whites incorporated 100%, but close to it. Most importantly is that the egg whites didn’t deflate very much so I was hopeful. I put it in the oven, set the timer, and hoped for the best. When I took it out of the oven, it hadn’t puffed up all that much, but it had raised some. It was a little dark on one edge but it looked pretty good. I had about one minute to photograph the soufflé before it started to fall. It tasted really good, especially the crunchy bits around the edges. It was nice and light and very chocolately. I thought that it was a very good soufflé for my first try. I’m certainly more encouraged to try other soufflés!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 406