The Amazing Souffle

Making a souffle has always been a frightening thought to me.  It's all those movies that we watched, showing how fragile the souffle is.  Instant deflation at the slightest aggravation (noise, temperature inconsistency, you name it).  Ran out of breakfast ideas - healthy breakfast ideas that is, and somehow thought its high time I attempted a souffle.


To qualify, I have not done ANY research whatsoever - from my limited google searches, there are all sorts of souffle, but falling into 2 general categories of sweet and savoury.  I made a sweet pistachio souffle one day (Nigella Lawson recipe) and a cheese souffle the next and you know what, it really is SO EASY to make; not to mention versatile and hardy too.  The instant deflation was indeed a fallacy.


Simple basic recipe taken from Nigella (cut and paste - comments in purple) :


30g soft unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing souffle cups
60g caster sugar, plus extra for dusting souffle cups and 1 Tbsp for the egg whites (may want to cut the sugar to 40g - found it a bit too sweet since pistachio already has natural sweetness)
20g plain flour
150 ml full-fat milk (I used skim milk)
4 large eggs separated
100g unsalted pistachios, ground
2 drops almond extract, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 1/2 tsp orange-flower water (didnt have any of these so just replaced with 1 tsp vanilla - still turned out ok - think there may be more character if a little lemon juice is added)
5 larges egg whites
pinch of salt
6 x 10g good quality dark chocolate
6 x 250ml ramekins or souffle dishes

Preheat the oven at 200C / gas mark 6 and put in a baking sheet. Use a little butter to grease the ramekins and then dust with sugar, tipping out the excess (the sugar is essential to help the souffle rise by gripping the sides of the ramekins; for savoury souffles, use breadcrumbs) 
Put the flour in a saucepan and add a little milk, just to blend. Then, stirring (whisking), add the rest of the milk and 60g sugar. Whisk over medium heat until it comes to boiling point, then whisk for 30 seconds and take off the heat, by which time it should be very thick. Let it cool a little and add the yolks gradually. Beat in the butter. Add the gound pistachios, the almond and vanilla extracts and the orange-flower water, and mix in well. 
Then, whisk all 5 egg whites together with a pinch of salt until soft peaks form. Sprinkle over the tablespoon of sugar and then carry on whisking until thick and glossy (some websites say it has to be stiff enough such that when you tip the bowl upside down, the whipped egg-whites stay stuck to the bowl) Lighten the mixture with some - up to a quarter - of the whites. Nigella says that we dont have to be afraid to just splodge the whites in at this point.   Now fold in (firmly but gently) the remaining whipped whites. 
Pour 1cm of the mixture into each ramekin, then lie chocolate pieces on top and pour over the remaining mixture. Open the oven and as quickly but unhurriedly as possible, arrange the dishes on the heated baking sheet (I didnt have a baking sheet). Immediately, turn the oven down to 180C / gas mark 4 and bake for 12-15 minutes, when the tops will be scorched gold and risen high above the ramekins' rims. Remove from the oven, dust with icing sugar and serve at once . But one note of reassurance: you can open the door oven during baking; they won't fall just because you've got the temerity to check in them)




This was my first attempt.  I really liked it - soft and creamy, yet light and fluffy on the inside - I am hooked. I rationalise that as souffles are mostly made up of eggs and egg whites (very little butter, flour and sugar), it is actually quite healthy.  Note : although probably best eaten immediately, I had one about 3 hours after, a little deflated but the texture was still pretty good.

I made a savoury one the next day using the recipe above as a base, but replacing the pistachio with 1 cup of cheddar cheese (can probably use all sorts of tasty cheese), excluded the sugar (safe for the 1 tbsp used to beat the egg white), the vanilla essence and the chocolate.  I also replace the sugar dusting for the ramekins to breadcrumbs. One can also finely chop chives and add to the mixture.  The success of the cheese souffle shows that the original recipe is really versatile and flexible.  The kids loved it. 


No pictures but the cheese souffle doesn't look as puffy as the sweet one (as cheese has oil, I guess) but still creamy and fluffy in the middle. 


So...SOUFFLE away.  It's really good. 

Olivia's 4th Birthday

Olivia has always wanted a "princess cake".  She was very vague about what a princess cake actually represents but one thing is clear - it must have some Disney princesses.

So we went a-hunting for Disney princess tiny figurines and found the ridiculously expensive things at Toys R Us.

I debated for some time whether to have a daisies cake or a princess cake, so decided to combine both.

The cake is a simple marble cake, but instead of marbled chocolate, I used pink food colouring and strawberry flavouring (gasp) to make a pink marble cake.  Icing was chocolate ganache in the middle and blueberry jam spread thinly all over the cake to help the fondant stick.

Happy 4th Birthday my Darling Olivia!! 

Chinese New Year 2012

The year of the Water Dragon (Chinese New Year 2012) is upon us.  How time flies.

Through years of tradition which my extended family meticulously follows, we start off early in the morning from the parents' home (after the tea and well wishes) then make our rounds to relatives' houses in a pre-determined and agreed order.  One "critical" part of these CNY visits for my family are the house gifts. One can't pay the visits empty handed so people bring small gifts such as an assortment of mandarin oranges, peanuts, some snacks. Its a pretty meaningful gesture that also sorta develops into a tradition. For example, my brother in law always brings the Chinese BBQ meat and meat floss, or my good friend and god sis always brings some fancy imported snacks and inevitably a health product for my parents.

For the last 2- 3 years, I wanted to do something different for the gifts and have been gifting cupcakes with lovely CNY toppers, ordered from different persons each year.  Unfortunately, it always looks very nice on the outside but the cake itself leaves much to be desired unfortunately.

This year, I decided to make my own cupcakes.  3 different types of cakes (banana, red velvet and carrot) with 4 varying designs.

Tried it out 2 weeks before CNY by making the said cupcakes for the teachers in Sri Nobel.  Turned out ok - see pic below.  The frosting is simply butter, icing sugar and lemon for the red velvet and carrot, and chocolate icing for the banana cupcakes.

Ran out of red writing icing so used gold instead..... big mistake

For CNY, I started making the cupcakes 1 day before CNY, but the toppers were made approx 1 week prior.  I really like the daisy toppers as they looked really sweet.

Had some pretty good feedback and think my relatives enjoyed the cakes so I'm pleased.  I'll most certainly do it again.

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR 2012

Ethan's Birthday - An Occasion for Angry Bird 2.0

Ethan's Birthday in Jan 2012 - the first birthday of the year!!! 


Wanted to share with all the Angry Birds Cake 2.0.  Admittedly, this design was partially copied from an image on the internet, and I think its an improvement from my earlier attempt.  The stone wall was a bit of a pain to make, as individual stones of different sizes and shapes needed to be rolled, pressed in and stuck with edible glue.  


The bottom layer was Red Velvet Cake with chocolate fudge icing (it was served during a BBQ party so cream cheese would have been impractical).  The best Choc Fudge icing EVER is Nigella's - can be found on her website - easy to make and delicious as with all her other recipes.  The cake on the top layer with the piggies is banana cake with choc chips [Failsafe banana cake recipe : 250gms butter beaten with equal weight of sugar (although if you are icing the cake, sugar qtt should be halved) and equal weight of flour; 4 eggs]


Finished product as below.

I was reminded that there are ALWAYS 3 eggs....oops

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ETHAN!!

Christmas Cake 2011

This post is approx. 1 month late!!  


In addition to a good rich heavy fruit cake (still looking for that recipe), we think Christmas is the perfect time to make a red velvet cake.  So moist, red and Christmas-y, enough said. 


Most red velvet recipes found online require an insane amount of red food colouring (coupled with some cocoa powder).  But there were some who recommended beetroot in replacement of red food colouring for a more natural alternative.  Think 3 tbsp of red food colouring (even organic ones) is simply too much, dont you? Beetroot must be the way to go.   


The Christmas cake adventure began with the making of the cake toppers.  We decided on a simple theme of an angel watching over a small nativity set. Surprisingly, pretty easy to make. Lots of guides available through a search on google. The heads were put in by skewering it to a toothpick to ensure that they stay on.  I have found that the fondant figurines need to be kept in an airtight container and stored in a relatively cool area (not the fridge) or they will "wilt" quite quickly.  Had a bit of a disaster with the first few angels as the wings became so soft that we couldn't get them to stand at the requisite 45 degree angle.  The trick - toothpicks!

For the red-velvet cake, we used our tried and tested carrot cake recipe, but replaced the carrots with beetroot, which has been put through a food processor and turned to mush. The batter looks really lovely! Surprisingly, beetroot does not leave any strong flavours, actually it imparts no flavours on the cake at all. So a tablespoon of cocoa powder or some lemon juice should be added for better depth of flavour.  After several tries (and failure) in getting that deep red colour, we cheated and added 1/2 tsp each of red and pink food colouring anyway.  

Red velvet cake batter

The cake was iced with cream cheese icing and the finished product is as below.  Could have looked better actually - looks pretty amateur (well..). The cake itself was simply delectable! Very much like the texture of the carrot cake, it was surprisingly moist yet light.  Kept pretty well in the fridge too.  The children loved the cake toppers, unfortunately, and they were promptly beheaded and de-winged almost immediately (poor baby Jesus...). 

This is actually not the Christmas cake but the test product the week before.  In the excitement,
we all forgot to take a picture of the cutout of the actual cake.  

Blessed Belated Christmas!