Chocolate soufflé

Godiva's ingredient list started out as this..

Chocolate soufflé:

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 large egg yolks

1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided

6 large egg whites

Pinch of salt

 

What would you do with the leftover egg yolks? I suppose this is what could happen.. The Godiva recipe leaves you with two egg yolks, I could crack open three more eggs, giving me five egg yolks (for lemon curd) and have three egg whites (for chocolate meringues).. which makes me wonder why I would hatch open nine eggs to make a batch of chocolate soufflé. So, the recipe has evolved twice. I dropped the salt and added cream of tartar because I lack copper mixing bowls.

 

6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

6 medium egg yolks

1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided

6 medium egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

 

I use Ghirardelli's dark chocolate since it's a decent chocolate that retains its flavor after baking and is somewhat sweet, but less sweet to its Nestlé or Hersheys counterparts. With Ghirardelli though, it still tastes sweet to me. If I make this version again, I'll probably drop the sugar requirement to 1/8 cup, or eliminate the sugar altogether if I'm baking for an Adkin's dieter. Dropping the sugar requirement would allow me to add 1/4 tsp almond extract to enhance the flavor of the chocolate and make it more aromatic. Flavor is a function of taste and smell, so while I probably can't fool the human tongue, I can still mess with the other senses.

 

So there you have it. Chocolate soufflé.

 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Fill molds 3/4 full. Bake for 12-15 minutes until puffed.

The evil GS cookie empire

This year I am boycotting GS cookie sales. There are many things wrong with the GS sale process, the primary one being that parents have become cookie pushers in their workplaces. There are other things as well, perhaps it is the natural evolution of cookie marketing. But, there are fewer cookies per box (yes, box size got a lot smaller) and the price has gone up. Now, granted that dairy prices have fluctated a bit over the last few years, having risen due to mad cow disease scares. Distribution costs are still low. GS has an army of girls, and now their parents, siblings, relatives, etc., peddling these cookies to anyone who breathes. They're outside supermarkets, movie theaters, in your workplace, and even peddled by retail merchants. It's amazing how much money is dumped into this "goodwill" scheme. If anything has come of this, it's that girls have learned how to delegate up, which is a very good skill if you can master it before you reach corporate America.