Making Homemade Chocolate Souffle

This post is going to be a little long and picture heavy, but we wanted to share one of our favorite desserts with you.  This was a dessert that our 'kids' asked us to prepare prior to them heading off to college. Chocolate Souffle is a decadent, smooth, delicious dish that you normally get in a nice restaurant.  Don't let that intimidate you into thinking you can't do this at home.  You CAN!

The recipe we use is from the good, old Betty Crocker Cookbook.  It gets lots of use around our house. Here's what Betty says you need to prepare it:

• 4 large eggs
• 1/3 cup Hershey's Cocoa
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons butter (at room temperature)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 3 tablespoons sugar

Ingredients all laid out

In a 1-quart saucepan, stir in the sugar, flour and cocoa until mixed and then gradually stir in the milk. Cook over medium heat, while stirring constantly, until the chocolate mixture thickens and comes to a boil. Stir and remove from heat.

Separate three eggs, placing the egg white in one bowl and the yolks in another.  Those pastured eggs are so nice and yellow.  When separating the fourth egg, place the yolk in a separate container to use in another recipe - tomorrow's scrambled eggs, for instance.  So you'll have four egg whites in one container and 3 egg yolks in another.

You gotta break a few eggs if you wanna make an omelet souffle

Here is our chocolate mixture looking good...

Beat the egg yolks with a fork until thick and then add in 1/3 of your chocolate mixture.  Mix well and stir back into the rest of the chocolate.

Stir in the butter and vanilla and let it cool slightly.

While we're waiting on the chocolate to cool, grease the ramekins with some butter.

Then pour some sugar into the ramekins and swish around.  Some of the sugar will stick to the buttered sides.  Pour remaining sugar into next ramekin and repeat until done.

Add the cream of tartar to the egg whites...

And add the salt to the egg whites...

Begin beating the egg whites with an electric mixer until foamy.

Then add 3 tablespoons sugar, one tablespoon at a time and continue beating until the whites form stiff peaks when beaters are lifted.

Add about 1/4 of the egg white mixture into the chocolate

And stir.

Then fold the remainder of the egg whites into the chocolate:

Pour the batter into the ramekins, using a rubber spatula to get every last drop.

You'll notice the ramekins are situated in a stoneware tray.  Pour some hot water in the bottom of the tray.

Place the tray into the oven.

To be specific, you'll want them in an oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit to cook for 18 minutes.

Oh my, look what we have here!  The souffle has risen nicely.  The aroma of chocolate beckons everyone to the kitchen so that we're circling the oven like buzzards over roadkill.

How about a closer look?

Confection Perfection!!

Well, let's not just look at it.  Let's have a bite, shall we?

Over the lips and past the gums...

And finally, the money shot!

Fork view of hot chocolate souffle

So it would be an understatement to say we all enjoyed the souffle.  If you paid attention, you saw that the recipe makes 6 souffles, meaning there was one left over that we sort of fought over.  You really want to eat it while it's warm as it will deflate and not retain the same level of delectable decadence once it cools. Now that Laura Lee and Russ are in college, Benjamin astutely noted that we'll each get to eat two souffles now! Smart boy.