12.20.2009

Success!

I did it! I made a souffle*!!! Successfully!

If you'll remember, I tried making Ina Garten's Blue Cheese Souffle once before with failed results. I even made it one of my goals in 2009 to master the souffle. Then I promptly forgot about all of it.

But while revisiting my 2009 goals recently, I realized I hadn't tried the souffle again. So with the clock ticking toward the end of the year, I attempted the souffle again last night with delectable results:

And here is where I giggled manically and nearly danced:
Again, I used Ina Garten's Blue Cheese Souffle recipe. Luckily, I could tell what I did wrong between my first attempt and this one. Ina's instructions include a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, which I don't have (who has room for one in a NYC apartment?!). I had two options for whipping the egg whites: by hand with a whisk or with my hand mixer.

Last time I held the hand mixer rather still, slowly stirring it around the bowl. The whites never reached "firm, glossy peaks" and instead went super flat. I think I probably mixed it for about 10 minutes, which was way too long.

This time, I thought about how a stand mixer with a whisk moves. Super fast, right? So I basically whisked the whites with my handheld mixer and it worked perfectly. As Ina instructs, I whisked one minute on low speed, one minute on medium speed, and then switch to high until the peaks appear. It took an additional 2 minutes on high.

It was perfect. Light as air, super rich, and paired perfectly with port. What a way to end 2009.

Eat, drink, and if you don't succeed, try again.


* I've complained about this before, I think, but I can't seem to get the accent mark on the "e" using Blogger. Which technically means I have misspelled "souffle" throughout this entire post. Which makes me die a little inside.

2 comments:

Kristin Cashore said...

Yay! Congratulations!

Re: the é accent -- do you use a laptop? Bring it to ALA and I'll show you :o)

Jen Hubert said...

Congrats! Hopefully you can reproduce this again so I can do a taste test:)