A dessert that has always fascinated me (in a vague, ambiguous, way-over-there-what-is-that curiosity sort of way) is the souffle. It poofs up and then deflats? What kind of dessert is this???
So, I resolved to conquer souffle making on my list of things to accomplish in my first year as a post-grad.
I had my dear friend Leslie over for a night of wine and cooking together. We’ve slowly been cooking our way through Julia Child’s cookbook (and do I mean slowly…it’s a good thing we’ll be friends for a long time cause there’s HUNDREDS of recipes in that book) and we decided to make Supremes De Volaille aux Champignons, or Chicken Breasts with Cream sauce and mushrooms.
It was heavenly. Absolutely heavenly. Make the recipe for the cream sauce (there’s white wine [we used a Pinot Blanc from Four Graces], beef stock, cream and SO MUCH BUTTER)…your life will never be the same.
Anyways, we were thinking about dessert and pondering what we wanted and we flipped to the souffle section and said why not?? So make a souffle is what we did.
Surprising, we had all the ingredients on hand: sugar, butter, flour, eggs, more butter, and 2 WHOLE TABLESPOONS of vanilla flavoring. I don’t think I’ve ever used that much vanilla flavoring ever.
The basic gist is you mix the dry ingredients and egg yolks over high heat, then add in egg whites beat into a frenzy. Fold it around a bit until it’s mixed then pour into whatever you want your souffles to grow in. I used ramekins.
Then bake for a bit and finish off with powdered sugar. We ate them with an Anam Cara Gewurztraminer.
And I missed the poof. I checked the oven once to see how they were doing and they were growing quite nicely and then I went to take them out of the oven and they had deflated. Oh well. There’s always next time right? There’s millions of souffle recipes out there. Maybe I’ll try a chocolate one next time!
The Great List
Ride horses on the beach- Take an online bartending class
- Be able to do the splits.
- Go backpacking through the Sisters Mountains
- Pick a cookbook and cook my way through it
- Bet on a horse at Emerald Downs/Portland Meadows
- Bar hop in Post Alley/Portland
- Go dog sledding
- Do a police-ride along
- Pay for the person behind me in a drive-through of some kind
- See an opera by the Seattle or Portland opera
- Run a 5K
- Write a fan letter
- Find an occasion to wear a huge dress
- Read Les Miserables
- Watch Shawshank Redemption
- Submit articles to three different magazines
Bake a soufflé- Wear dresses/skirts for a week straight
- Make a video for the blog
- Name the blog
Lovely in the Everyday 