Last weekend I was discussing my blog with the awesome Craig Holiday (check his website out) after a fabulous motivational talk he did. During the conversation, he asked me if I had a favorite chocolate soufflé recipe to share. It dawned on me that not only did I not have a fabulous soufflé recipe to brag about, but I had never even made a soufflé.
I literally thought about this fact all day and decided that I had to throw out my blog schedule for this week and do some rearranging…it was time to bake a soufflé. So I started out this week with Challenge: Soufflé on my mind.
It was a done deal that I would tackle a chocolate soufflé this week, but I didn’t want to stop there. I was visiting my parents over Mother’s Day weekend, and my mom and I watched a show on the Cooking Channel called The Big Cheese. Let’s take a moment and appreciate the fact that there is a show that was completely and utterly devoted to cheese. Okay, back to reality…during the show, the host went to a farm in New England and saw how the milk went from the animal to be made into cheese. He helped make one of my favorite cheeses during the duration of the show…goat cheese. Then he took that freshly made cheese to a local restaurant to see how a chef would cook with it. The chef decided upon a goat cheese soufflé…it was a sign that I had no choice but to experiment with soufflés this week.
So I was on a mission to hunt down a goat cheese soufflé recipe. I couldn’t find the one the chef made on the show, but I found what looked like a very similar recipe on the Cooking Channel’s website. It was a recipe by Sara Moulton, so I knew I couldn’t go too wrong here. After all, Sara did work with the one and only Julia Child.
I decided to start off this week with the goat cheese soufflé and end with the chocolate soufflé, since I am a self-professed chocaholic. So let’s proceed with these recipes…
Recipes:
Recipe #1: Twice-Baked Goat Cheese Soufflés
Since I’d never made a soufflé before, I was a little nervous. But the fact that there was goat cheese involved was reason enough to push forward and take this culinary journey. The recipe itself seemed pretty straightforward. I started with a roux, which is something I’ve been making since I was old enough to stir a pot on the stove top with my mom.
I knew I could do it, and I’m so glad that I made the effort. Funny enough, the most difficult part was getting the soufflés out of the oven and onto a cooling rack since they were in a water bath. I may have burned my thumb, but that just gives me character. My point here is that this wasn’t a difficult recipe to make, it just takes a little time and patience (and maybe some different pot holders).
I topped the soufflé with a thyme cream and served salad greens tossed with a light vinaigrette and some leftover goat cheese on the side. I used the same Cooking Light vinaigrette that I made the week I featured polenta. This soufflé was seriously amazing and I cannot urge you enough to give this dish a shot. You will impress all of your friends with this easy and delicious soufflé…I promise!
Click here for the step by step instructions and recipe.
Recipe #2: Dark Chocolate Soufflé
Um, wow. Let’s just start with that. This soufflé smelled so good when I took it out of the oven that I had to dive in while I was still taking photos.
…See? I couldn’t help myself. I’m a sucker for chocolate, especially dark chocolate. When I was searching for a chocolate soufflé recipe and saw a Dark chocolate Soufflé recipe, I stopped my search and never looked back. I found the recipe on a really cool site called Cooking for Engineers. It’s geared towards people with an analytical mind that like to cook…check and check! Plus I love that it gives actual measurements for ingredients (grams and ounces, for example), so that I can weigh ingredients when the measurements are really small.
Another great thing about the recipe (aside from the copious amount of dark chocolate) is that it only makes two servings. I appreciate that and so does my figure. 🙂 Actually this soufflé surprisingly only has 1/2 Tablespoon of butter and 1 ounce of heavy cream in it in total. So I didn’t feel quite so guilty as I savored every bite.
Everyone needs a solid chocolate soufflé recipe and this one does not disappoint. Look how gorgeous it turned out!
Please do yourself a favor and click here for the step by step instructions and recipe!
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