A Chocolate Soufflé from Hell

I had always thought that Robbie Burns' famous line "the best laid schemes o' mice and men/Gang aft a-gley" came from a poem entitled "To a Mouse".  I am now convinced that there was a typo in the first edition of his collected works and that the poem was actually called "To a Mousse or Soufflé".

When Regee went off to Manila on one of her cookbook trips, she left behind a typed up recipe from America's Test Kitchen for a "Make Ahead Chocolate Soufflé".

I had watched her make it on several occasions and was inspired to try it myself a little while ago.  Maybe it was beginner's luck but my first attempt turned out just fine.  Even my second attempt turned out well so I was a little over-confident when I decided to make it for an upcoming dinner party last Sunday evening.

Here is a brief account, told mainly in photos, of how even a minor deviation from this "best laid" recipe can upend the unknowing and unwary!

 First step is to undertake your mise en place and make sure that everything is to hand

 Coat 8 ramekins in butter and sprinkle with granulated sugar.  This ensures the soufflé rises easily 

 Cut up 1 tablespoon of cold unsalted butter and melt another 4 tablespoons to mix with the chocolate

 You need 8 ozs of bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate

 Melt chocolate and butter over a pan of boiling water--do not apply direct heat

And now comes the tricky part--take eight eggs and separate the yolks from the whites

 Here are the separated yolks--although we only need six
of them for this recipe. Aren't they cute?

 Carefully, oh so carefully, "fold" the whipped egg yolks into the melted chocolate and butter.  Regee told me that "folding" was a subtle wrist action and no more.  Ahem.  

 And you get this thick, rich chocolatey, buttery and yolky mixture

You then take the egg whites and start whipping them, adding confectioner's sugar and, when you get "soft peaks," add a 1/4 teaspoon of Cream of Tartare to bring them to perfection

This is where the photos stop.  To my horror, the whites were not rising.  On the contrary, they were just becoming a white pulsating liquid.  Panic. What had gone wrong?  I ran to the fridge and pulled out eight more eggs, hurriedly cracked and separated them and started whipping up the second batch of whites.  Meanwhile, I noticed that the so-called "melted" chocolate/yolk/butter combination was getting a bit hard.  Yikes.  I duly applied confectioner's sugar to the second batch of whites and waited for those mythical "soft peaks" described in the recipe to appear.  Nada.  I added the specified 1/4 teaspoon of Cream of Tartare but still no "soft peaks" appeared.

What was I supposed to do?  I just kept whipping until the whites became suspiciously hard.  You are supposed to be able to put an egg on the whites and it should be supported if you have reached the right consistency.  I was pretty sure that a Boeing-747 could have landed on my whites! So, I stopped and began "folding" the whites into the now rather stiff chocolate concoction.  The trouble was that the whites were more like the consistency of marshmallows.  Rather than "folding" the whites into the chocolate, I was having to break them down by pounding them in an attempt to break them up so that the melange could take place.  No subtle wrist action here.  I felt more like Thor than Julia Child at this moment.

The final mixture did not look good.  It was hard and a bit on the lumpy side.  I was going to throw the whole sad mess away in a rage but decided that would have been a chronic waste of food and over two hours of hard labor.  So, I put the strange mixture into the ramekins and, as specified in the recipe, put them away in the freezer until the next evening when they would be brought out and put into the 400F oven for precisely 18 minutes.  Not a moment less or a moment more.

I was so sure that they would be a disaster, I put together this berry dessert (left) with Cointreau as part of my Plan B dessert.

When the ramekins were safely in the fridge, I googled "reasons egg whites won't harden for soufflé".  Google knows everything right?  I quickly found the answer or answers.  Were my eggs old?  No.  Was there any oil or even a speck of dirt in my Kitchen Aid machine or on the blades?  I don't think so.  And then it dawned upon me when I saw the ominous words "room temperature".  I had taken the eggs straight out of the fridge in my haste.  They were COLD!  Cold egg whites won't whip up properly.  My egg whites had only whipped up because I left that Kitchen Aid sucker running for about 12 minutes.  The thing was red hot by the time I was finished.

And another thing.  Why had my first batch of egg whites just turned to liquid?  This answer did not come from Google.  It came from Regee.  "Did you get any egg yolk in the whites?" And then it all came back to me.  YES, there had been some yolk in that first batch of egg whites.  I was carefully cracking each egg and separating each yolk from the white.  In one instance the yolk came out, I let the egg white slide between my slightly parted fingers and, just at the last moment, a SECOND YOLK came out of that same egg and plonked down into my egg whites.  Holy Mackerel.  I tried to scoop the yolk out of the egg whites--but not very successfully.  I do remember that there were yellow strands left in there--like yellow "blood" at the scene of a crime.  "That's why your whites were a failure," intoned Regee, like a judge placing the black hanging cap on her head!

When I was relaying this sad story at the dinner party the next night, I suddenly remembered a scene from the Netflix movie "Marco Polo" that I had been obsessively binge-watching for the last few evenings.  It was the awful scene where the Blue Princess had finally given birth to a daughter after hours and hours of horrendous labor and screaming. The Queen Mother, Chabi, knew that this was not going to go down well with Kublai Khan who had to have a son to succeed him.

There was deadly silence in the birthing chamber and everyone looked down in dread at this poor little baby girl.    This went on for a few minutes and then the Blue Princess let out a heart-rending cry and and screamed: "There's another one. There's another one".  And with that she went back into labor and sure enough, a baby BOY appeared, covered in gore.  The dynasty was saved!  

It was just like my yolks.  The first one came out and it was a quiet, well-behaved GIRL yolk.  But then, horror of horrors, from the very same egg, a BOY yolk appeared out of nowhere!!  I think I was a little drunk while telling this story at the dinner party but my audience definitely got the idea of what had gone wrong.  In Marco Polo the dynasty was saved.  Chez Newport, the dinnersty was ruined!!

OK. OK.  So, what happened at the dinner party?  Well after 18 minutes, the soufflés came out of the oven and.....drum roll....they were actually edible.  They rose up as promised and were, miraculously, none the worse for having been so horribly battered and mishandled by me.   They had been to hell and back (and so had I) but it all turned out well.  What a saga.  

After all that, I completely forgot to take a photo of the final products but one of my guests, Lyndsey, had the presence of mind to take the photo above.  

Robbie Burns would have been so impressed that my wee timorous mousse (or soufflé) had not "gang a-gley".  Phew!