Chocolate souffle

Ever since I watched Chef Monica Galetti making a strawberry soufflé in an old MasterChef series, I was fascinated by this dessert. Finally timing seemed perfect today to make this dessert as our weekend treat.  Now that the summer is over, I didn’t want to make a fruit one, so the next best option was a chocolate soufflé. I watched quite a few YouTube videos and together with all the tips I saw from MasterChef and few other chefs like Gordon Ramsey, I roughly got an idea how to make it and came up with this recipe with the basic ingredients I had. It was just a trial and never expected to come out this perfectly. I did overbake it for a bit but I have corrected the timing in the recipe. The baking time for this will vary depending on the size of your ramekins, temperature of your oven etc. So please be mindful of that when you make this.

So here is how I made it.

Ingredients

For chocolate cream patisserie

Plain flour – 1 tablespoon

Butter – 1 tablespoon

Dark chocolate – 100 gm, broken into pieces (70 % cocoa solids)

Egg yolks – 2

Milk -75 ml

Vanilla extract – 1 tsp

For meringue

Egg whites – 2

Granulated sugar – 40 gm/roughly 3 tablespoon

Butter at room temperature  to grease the ramekins

Sugar - 3 tsp (to coat the ramekins)

Method

Grease 6 ramekins generously with softened butter and refrigerate for 5 minute. Take it out and give another coating of butter( tip from Gordon Ramsey) . Sprinkle the ramekins with caster sugar, tip out the excess and put it back in the fridge again.

In a saucepan, add 1 tablespoon of butter and when it melts, add flour and cook for a minute or so until it thickens a bit.

Add milk to the saucepan and cook for 2-3 minutes until it thickens a little bit. Remove from fire.

Add broken chocolate to it and let it stand for some time until the chocolate melts.

Mix well, add the egg yolks and mix again and set aside.

Meanwhile make the meringue. In a clean bowl add 2 egg whites and beat until soft peaks are formed. ( donot add sugar before getting soft peaks, tip from Monica)

Add sugar one tablespoon at a time at this point and beat until stiff peaks are formed.

Take 1/3 rd of the meringue and mix it gently to the chocolate mixture with a thin spoon.

Gently fold in the rest of the meringue to the mixture being careful not to knock much air out of it.

Fill the ramekins with the mixture  until it’s full. Level it with a spatula and then run a finger around the edges to make a small gap which allows the souffles to rise perfectly .

Bake the souffles in a preheated oven at 180 degree C for 12-15 minutes until it’s well risen and set with a slight wobble.

Dust it with some icing sugar and serve immedietly with ice cream.