chocolate soufflé

Sidetrack Alert. There was more chocolate foam than the baking dish could hold. The surplus was fried as a pancake. It is all an experiment. Wrong, yes, I know, but it does give me a chance to taste now and begin an assessment of what there is going on in the oven. 

This is very good, but wrong. 

:-( 

So back to the drawing board for me. 

The aim is to match or surpass what was served the other night at La Central. I was taken with how light their soufflé was. This is a revelation to me. It was so light it seemed mostly meringue with very little cocoa suspended within it. That surprised me because I would have started, as one does, with a sauce, then lighten the sauce with 1/3 the meringue and then fold the remaining 2/3 meringue into that, which would have suspended chocolate sauce throughout the meringue. But La Central did not appear to do that. Instead, I think they used a vanilla meringue with few but not many areas of what appeared in the dim light to be a very light chocolate-flavored bread pudding punctuating the meringue. And then an additional chocolate ganache served on the side, so the diner controls the amount of actual chocolate poured over the whole thing, not chocolate baked within the soufflé as I expected. No chocolate couverture was harmed in the production of this dessert, of that I am certain.

Whereas theirs is etherial, mine is dense. Theirs is meringue-y, mine is spongy. Theirs is barely chocolate at all, mine is thickly chocolate. I really held back on the cocoa powder too because I did not know how it would mix with the meringue. The next one will have even less cocoa, if any at all.  

You know how you must make sure not to inhale when lifting a powdered doughnut to your lips least you asphyxiate yourself by accidentally coating your esophagus with confectioner's sugar carried in with the inhalation? That was going on here too except with cocoa powder instead of powdered sugar. There should be a warning about that. It could kill an asthmatic. 

That informed me that cocoa is the form of chocolate used. It also suggested how to prepare the bowl -- with butter and cocoa rather than with butter and grated hard cheese as usual. 

La Central also offered a Grand Marnier soufflé along with the chocolate soufflé on their Thursday menu. I am disappointed in Grand Marnier generally. I do not think it lives up to its reputation. I could be wrong, but it hasn't worked out all that well for me, so I passed on that. Actually, I passed on both, my companion handed me half of their dessert in which I had no initial interest. Perhaps both of those soufflés contain alcohol. I do no know, it was not specified on the menu. I do have a bottle of Mozart Chocolate Cream that does nothing but age in the cabinet. Maybe I should include some of that in the next attempt. 

This is the second time in a row that a soufflé failed to attain any elevation. This has me worried. Am I losing the touch? Are jumbo eggs to be avoided? Am I overlooking something basic? Maybe I had just sit down and read a few books. 

Things learned: 

*  Use milk instead of cream to soak the bread.

*  Soak the bread longer so that it nearly disintegrates

*  Less bread to meringue

*  Use almost little to no cocoa in the meringue

*  Consider a chocolate flavored alcohol.

*  Include vanilla to soak the bread and the meringue

*  Consider coffee or espresso to round out the chocolate.

update: Although this soufflé is fine, the second try successfully approximated the chocolate soufflé at La Central can be viewed  here