I invited some friends (a jazz singer, a musician and a boxer) over for dinner today. I was having trouble deciding what to cook. My menu changed from lamb, steak, fish... finally my editor decided for me - chicken rice, a typical food you find in Malaysia and Singapore, should be nice for my Hungarian, Venezuelan and Dutch friends ;) For dessert, I chose chocolate soufflé.
I underestimated the time needed to prepare the chicken rice, so I was left with just about enough time to prepare the dessert before my friends arrived. But I screwed up the first batch. I think the cream was a little too hot when I poured it into the melted chocolate and the mixture curdled and became coarse and oily, so down it went into the drain... Second time was better, still not getting the silky smooth and elastic texture that it was supposed to have, but I had no time and ingredients for a third time, quicky I whipped up the egg whites using muscle power (I am rather good at it, ask Malinder, she'll vouch for me ;)) and folded it into the chocolate mixture, it was more like I expected it to look. Relieved, I finally put it to bake. It wasn't that bad after all, it rose as a soufflé should be and it was fluffy and moist. We happily dug into it ;) I was quite thankful that a near miss turned out to be a pretty decent dessert! So the moral of the story is never give up until the last minute. At the end of the night, we were already talking about the next dessert - key lime pie which I believe owes its origin to the Latin American continent. I'm looking forward to learning the secret behind this dessert from my Venezuelan friend's mom, one of those mom-knows-best recipes, can't wait!
I underestimated the time needed to prepare the chicken rice, so I was left with just about enough time to prepare the dessert before my friends arrived. But I screwed up the first batch. I think the cream was a little too hot when I poured it into the melted chocolate and the mixture curdled and became coarse and oily, so down it went into the drain... Second time was better, still not getting the silky smooth and elastic texture that it was supposed to have, but I had no time and ingredients for a third time, quicky I whipped up the egg whites using muscle power (I am rather good at it, ask Malinder, she'll vouch for me ;)) and folded it into the chocolate mixture, it was more like I expected it to look. Relieved, I finally put it to bake. It wasn't that bad after all, it rose as a soufflé should be and it was fluffy and moist. We happily dug into it ;) I was quite thankful that a near miss turned out to be a pretty decent dessert! So the moral of the story is never give up until the last minute. At the end of the night, we were already talking about the next dessert - key lime pie which I believe owes its origin to the Latin American continent. I'm looking forward to learning the secret behind this dessert from my Venezuelan friend's mom, one of those mom-knows-best recipes, can't wait!
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| I put too much into the bowl, the souffle was overflowing but no one complained ;) |
2 comments:
That looks good! Soufflé is tough and tricky to make, but I'm sure that the end result was worth it ;)
Thanks for the encouraging comment! I was pretty happy with the end result :) must do better next time ;)
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