Fired-up Cooking SA @ Food24

Well, thanks to Inspiration‘s challenge, I made my first ever souffle!  Yes, I can hear you asking – how many years have you been cooking??  I know, but somehow when you are cooking in bulk for a large family, souffles don’t rate high on your range of supper dishes.  Just no bulk there, people!  Can you imagine, the teenage boy in the family would have to eat another loaf of bread (on top of the one he ate for lunch) just to fill up.

So – as this was uncharted territory for me, I did research, thanks to Google, and promptly scared myself half to death!  There are some very elaborate and strict instructions out there, from preparing the ingredients to preparing the dish to cook it in.  Oh, and there’s a whole range of positively scientific souffle dishes – like the one in which you bake the souffle, then pop the whole thing into a silver outer dish for serving! Wow.

In the end my scrounging led me to a dessert souffle recipe (in one of my old recipe books, too) which I could adapt easily, and which appealed to AP and NJ – after all they had to eat it

Chocolate Cherry Souffle

4 eggs, room temperature, separated

1/4 cup castor sugar

1/4 cocoa

2 Tbsp brandy

1 tin black cherries, drained

icing sugar

• Set the oven to 190C.  Butter a shallow glass dish
• Arrange the cherries in the dish
• Beat the egg yolks until pale yellow
• In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form
• Gradually beat in the sugar, followed by the cocoa
• Gently fold the yolks into the whites, followed by the brandy
• Pour the egg mixture over the cherries, smooth flat
• Bake in the upper 1/3 of the oven for about 15 minutes until puffed up and set
• Dredge with icing sugar, and serve immediately

This is a bit of a cheat’s souffle – the recipe called it an ‘omelette souffle’.  But it was really easy and quite delicious, rich dark bitter chocolate sponge over tart juicy cherries – really yum.  This would be gorgeous served with vanilla ice cream, too.

So – now that I’ve broken the ice, I think I’ll tackle a proper souffle soon – came across a delicious sounding smoked haddock souffle……thanks for inspiring me, Inspiration!

Have a wonderful day, people!