To make the batter, you melt bittersweet chocolate with butter, add in cinnamon and egg yolks, and then fold in egg whites that have been beaten (with cream of tartar, salt, sugar, and vanilla) to stiff peaks. You divide the batter between four ramekins that have been buttered and coated with cinnamon-sugar, and bake.
.JPG)
The recipe instructs you to bake the soufflés for eight minutes, and says that they are generally finished after rising between an inch and a half to two inches; the center will be jiggly and the perimeter should be almost set. After eight minutes, my soufflés looked almost exactly like the one pictured in the cookbook; they had puffy and smooth tops, and the edges were set. I pulled all of the soufflés out of the oven and plated one so I could photograph it before it sank. I took a few photos and then dug in with a spoon to find that the inside was completely raw. I tried to salvage the remaining three soufflés by putting them back in the oven, even though they had been sitting out at room temperature for about two minutes while I futzed around with the first one.
After another two minutes in the oven, the soufflés had risen a bit more, and the tops had developed large cracks. Again, I selected one and plated it and photographed it, only to discover that the inside was still substantially undercooked. So I did another round of putting the remaining two soufflés back in the oven for another two minutes.
The third time was the charm -- the third soufflé was properly cooked inside. I didn't like the domed and cracked top (I've made a lot of soufflés but I've never made ones that looked like these before), but I'm going to blame that on my unfortunate baking procedure of repeatedly moving the soufflés in and out of the oven, instead of just baking them straight through. I have to say that completely aside from the irritation of dealing with multiple soufflés that were undercooked inside, I was disappointed in the way these turned out. They didn't taste very good.
I thought that the soufflés were not sweet enough. I used 62% Scharffen Berger chocolate (the recipe specifies chocolate between 60 and 70 percent), so I was surprised that the soufflé tasted borderline bitter to me. If anything, I think that the cinnamon seemed to amplify the bitterness -- and I might be an outlier, but I have never been a big fan of the combination of chocolate with cinnamon. Although perhaps my bitter mood from the undercooked soufflés influenced my taste perception. Either way, this recipe is one I don't plan to revisit.
Recipe: "Cinnamon Chocolate Soufflés" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
Comments