Soufflés

This week I decided to venture into the world of baking! Lately I’ve become enthused with the discipline—I love the sweet smells and tastes of baked goods and being able to share them with others. Luckily for me, on campus at Penn State there’s never a shortage of those willing to eat freshly baked goods.

This evening, with the help of some friends, I tried baking soufflés—a lightly baked cake consisted of eggs and various combinations of ingredients. The world ‘soufflé’ comes from the French past participle of the verb ‘souffler’, which means to blow out or blow up. As the name implies, if prepared correctly, when the soufflé comes out of the oven it should be puffed up and fluffy.

Beforehand I wasn’t quite sure what these desserts were, and to me they always seemed complicated. The idea of attempting to make them sounded very French and difficult, but I looked forward to the challenge. I was ready to try baking something personally novel, knowing it could end up as sweet success or bitter defeat.

Our recipe for the evening was for chocolate soufflés. The ingredients sounded simple (eggs, sugar, butter, chocolate morsels, water and lemon juice), and the instructions sounded easy enough. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all!

We brushed ramekins (a small baking dish used for baking) with butter and sugar, melted and combined ingredients and beat eggs for what seemed hours. After a sink full of dirty dishes and tired arms from holding the beater, we were finally ready to pour out the soufflé batter into the ramekins.

The batter itself was fluffy; it reminded me of the kind used for meringues or angel food cake. We poured the batter to the tops of the ramekins, slid them into the oven, set at 400˚F, and prayed that they would have the fluffiness key to soufflés.

After about 15 minutes we peeked though the oven door to check their progress. We were happy to find that they had risen a significant amount—it was as if they had become inflated balloons!

When they were done baking, we took out the swelled cakes and sprinkled powder sugar on them. Within just a few minutes after being taken out of the oven the soufflés notably deflated.

The recipe called for the soufflés to be served immediately, so with forks in hand my friends and I tentatively delved into the desserts. This was by far the most painful part of the experience—having been in the 400˚F oven for 20 minutes, the soufflés were piping hot and burned our mouths as we tried to taste them. But, through the pain of the hotness, we all tasted the sweetness of our soufflés.

None of us had ever made a soufflé before or, for that matter, eaten one. That being said, none of us had an idea of exactly how a soufflé was supposed to look or taste. Regardless, the ones we made had the fluffiness and tasted delicious. In our opinions, this venture was a success!