Misadventure 4 - Chocolate Soufflé

Today's recipe is brought to you by Lindt chocolate.  Suppose to look like this from their website:

We'll see how this will go...BeaPea?

So far the ramekins have not been buttered even though they are supposed to. 

And it has been an interesting time coordinating the egg cracking. It's apparently Saki's favourite part but Megaspoot has already offered to take over. Apparently someone needs to cut the chocolate. Megaspoot is not allowed as he might end up taking fingers off. 

There are black specks in the ramekins, Hera hasn't used them in a while. It's ok, it will be disguised by the chocolate. Hera keeps wandering around whispering "it smells so good". I think Saki is a bit scared. She is starting to talk to the eggs. You know it's a good time when someone says "it's not that I don't trust you...". Can you feel the trust? Uh...apparently the butter and sugar is supposed to be rolled into a long rope? I'm pretty sure I heard that incorrectly. 

Nope, did not... the recipe calls for the butter and flour to be put 'in a bowl and knead together. Roll into a rope and cut into small pieces.' I guess I did hear part of that incorrectly. Hera gets to use her brand spanking new measuring cups. But she says she's already used them already. I feel cheated. Oops, first mistake, all the egg white went into a bowl, but one was supposed to be kept out. Guesstimations abound! There is a lot of multitasking going on, everyone is off doing their own part. I wonder if that means we're getting better. Or cocky. Go Icarus go! Wait, what? To make things just a tiny bit more difficult, the bluetooth on my tablet won't work. Hera just opened the oven. There is a wok in there. You know you're in an Asian kitchen when... It's always good when suggestions come out after, like, "hey why don't we just make a roux instead of kneading the flour and butter together?" According to Saki, she is making art. Or rather, 'art'? Saki needs more surface area. For her art. 'Art'. There is contention about the thickness of the soufflé batter...thing. At least there is no contention about whether or not flour will thicken it more. Yes. Yes, it will. So it turns out 4 science majors and an English major with a teaching degree are not able to follow directions. The batter looks burnt. 

It's hard to tell because it's chocolate, but it's definitely chunky. We are switching tools from whisk to spatula. "When in doubt, just eat this, " says Saki. The English major is wise beyond her degree. Yay, after a restart we finally have the bluetooth keyboard connected. Unfortunately the batter is not going as well. Evidently the batter is supposed to be 'poured' into a bowl. The operative word is 'pour' as it is currently quite solid. The math is being checked and what to do is being batted around. The decision seems to be to go ahead and see what happens.  

Saki is now whipping the egg white with the sugar thrown in. Hera originally asked if people wanted to do that by hand or by hand mixer. Lucky for Saki, she is doing it with a hand mixer. The internet is good when doing conversions... or whenever. 

Hera has taken over the egg white whipping. She looks much more comfortable. 

She just tried to tip the bowl of egg whites over Saki's head. She would not let her. She put it over her own head instead. 

The egg whites are about to go in! ...and there they go. 

That was relatively uneventful. The egg yolks went in. It was supposed to be one at a time. Instead of just throwing them in one at a time, Megaspoot decided to scramble the egg yolks and then estimate the yolk amount per time. Weird. Hera's spatula size is inadequate for Megaspoot's large hands apparently. The 'batter' is still exceptionally thick. All the yolks have gone in. The batter is a bit gooey-er. "Have hope and faith," says Hera. She is channeling the recent tv show that she watched but forgotten the name. The batter is starting to look more like batter.

Hera's kettle plays minuet in G major. Megaspoot's just scratched his face with chocolate fingers. He asked if there's any chocolate on his face. Saki feels this is a miscalculation on his part to trust us to tell him the truth. She may be correct. Saki is hurting by trying to help. 

Hurrah! The ramekins are being tapped. Die air, diiiie! Or just be tapped out of the soufflé. Saki is attempting to do 2 at the same time. 

Adding boiling water to tray to commence souffle baking!

The soufflés are now in the oven. There is naught to do until they rise now. The waiting game begins...and the games come out. *time passes*... 

The moment has arrived. The oven gloves are going on and the cameras are going out. 

 Saki is taking a picture of Megaspoot taking a picture of Saki taking a picture of... anyway.

Megaspoot just told Hera to "give it a jiggle." How is he still alive? Moving on... Apparently the stove was still on. How long has it been? We appear to be making Hera dismantle her kitchen. At least she's organized! 

Yay, the soufflés appear to be a success. All that's needed now is taste test...

Final Thoughts: it is puffy like a soufflé, but it is lacking the creaminess. Kind of like a fluffy muffin. Very fluffy muffin.

RECIPE FROM Lindt.com:

LINDT CHOCOLATE SOUFFLÉ

Yield: Eight 4 oz (120 mL) ramekins, or one 7-inch (16 cm) large soufflé form, for 8 servings

Ingredients:

¼ cup (55 g) butter

¹_/3 cup +2 (55 g) tablespoons flour

½ cup (125 mL) milk

40 g Lindt Excellence 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate, chopped

¹_/3 cup (40 g) cocoa powder

5 egg whites

4 egg yolks

¹_/3 cup (65 g) sugar

Melted butter and sugar to prepare soufflé forms

1) Preheat oven to 200°C (392°F)

2) Prepare forms/form by coating the inside with melted butter and sprinkling with sugar. Tap out any excess sugar.

3) Put the butter and flour in a bowl and knead together. Roll into a rope and cut into small pieces.

4) Put the milk, chopped chocolate, and cocoa powder in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring continuously.

5) Add the flour/butter pieces and stir until smooth and thickened.

6) Removed the saucepan from heat and stir in one egg white.

7) Pour the mixture into a bowl and cool until lukewarm

8) Add the egg yolks one at a time, stirring.

9) Whip the remaining egg whites, gradually adding the sugar until they form stiff peaks.

10) Carefully fold the whipped egg whites into the chocolate mixture.

11) Spoon the soufflé mixture into the prepared forms.

12) Place the forms in a large baking pan. Fill the baking pan into very hot water up for the middle of the forms, and place in lower third of the oven.

13) Reduce the oven temperature to 190°C (374°F).

14) Bake 25-30 minutes to small forms or 35-40 minutes for large form.

15) Never open the oven door when making a soufflé! (The recipe is so bossy)

16) Prepare serving plates and powdered sugar while the soufflés are baking.

17) When finished, remove from the oven, set the soufflé in its form on dessert plate, sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve. A soufflé will hold its shape for a few minutes.

Misadventure 3 - Pudding Cake aka 砵仔糕

Hera, here again, for this misadventure, we'll be doing a Hong Kong favourite. Pudding cake is steamed glutinous rice cake prepared in a palm-size bowl.  It's sold now pretty much in any Chinese pastry stores or street hawkers.  Flavours can vary but generally brown sugar, white sugar, and variations of the two with filling such as red bean or coconut have been developed.   

from http://www.wangtu.com/pic_zixun/techan/o201010211604546316.jpg

This round we'll be making the traditional brown sugar, then a few with red bean, and the rest with coconut filling.  On with the show.  Take it away, BeaPea!

This time it's an all-girls show, and night of reminiscing... of high school! Dundundun. It will be Saki's first time joining us. I think we have already impressed her with our lack of knowing what we're making (BeaPea), can barely read the instructions (Guimauve) and don’t know how to convert the ingredients’ measurements (Hera).

Again, we found a old newspaper clipping of the recipe, no source again, sorries!  Another HK newspaper maybe Sing Tao?

We also don't know how many servings this recipe makes. We also forgot the camera and tablet to begin with. After fetching them from the basement, Saki promptly forgot where she put the camera. We are a good team. 

Hera: It's simple. 

Saki: Sure.

It's good to know we all have such faith in our abilities. Everything has been measured, approximately, 

and we're currently just waiting for the sugar to melt

Hera is about to pour the melted sugar into the dry ingredients. Drumroll please... 

"I will come and stir when [the solution] looks stable," says Saki, whose favourite thing to do is apparently to flick things into people's faces. Guimauve totally trusts her. Hera is very hurt by Saki's lack of trust in her ability to pour molten liquid. Saki smells chicken broth, maybe she's having a stroke. Hera is having a great time, though! 

 

Evidently there is discrepancy between the picture that came with the recipe and mixture. We are so far chalking this up to using different kind of sugar. Hera is trying to subtly hurry Saki's stirring by insisting she is not trying to hurry her. ‘It's our first try’ is how Guimauve is making sense of all this. 

Hera is also having a stroke according to Saki because she says our mixture smells like walnuts to her. Our mixture has neither chicken broth nor walnuts. Guimauve had a brilliant idea that they could share an ambulance. "Mmmmmm, good," says Hera in her baby voice. I think that's a good sign? 










Hera just said "and this part isn't in the recipe." Should we really be improvising? Apparently yes! We are adventurous folk, we ares. I believe this is the adding of the filling. 

These red bean has been pre-boiled for about 2 hours to soften them.

These red bean has been pre-boiled for about 2 hours to soften them.

This first batch shall be with coconut shreds. Saki wants one with 1.5 redbeans. How precise. Maybe she's secretly German. 

Coconut shred - slightly frozen because we forgot to thaw them.

First, pour them into ramekins.

Then spoon in desire filling.

 The cakes have been steaming for 10 minutes. "5 more minutes," says Hera.

Coconut!

Close up on the coconut!

mmmm....Red bean!

 

Tick, tock, tick, tock... They've been removed from the steamer. 

Now comes the answer to Hera's question 'what do we do now?' Next problem...how do we get these things out of the containers? Hera's dad suggested poking it with a stick and pulling it out. I suggested using a knife to scrape the sides and pat the bottom.

Looks like the knife on sides worked. Victory!

Final thoughts: The coconut ones don't seem to be firming up as well but we're taking them out now anyway. The verdict is... it tastes like sticky sugar. Guimauve would like a little more bounce in it, it's leaning a bit more towards the cake-y side of things. Consensus is that it should have maybe spent more time in the steamer. The second batch did, so we'll see if there is a difference. Apparently this one is a bit more watery because there was condensation dripping into it. Also the red beans are a bit hard. We may also have skimped on the flour. Third try is coconut and red bean. Hera is having trouble getting it out of the ramekin. The coconut one is a bit fluffier but it may have been the removal method, as it did not come out in one piece.  Still pretty successful, given we were making things up as we went along!

Recipe (Translation from article above):

100 g Rice Flour

½ Tbsp Glutinous Rice Flour

50 g Non-glutinous flour

120 g Raw Cane Sugar (we used the flat bar kind)

3 Tbsp red bean (pre-boiled to soften)

410 g water

1) Dissolve the sugar in 400 g of boiling water.

2) Mix all the flour together then add in remaining 10 g of water and mix well into a paste.

3) Add the sugar mixture in portions to the flour paste until everything is well incorporated.

4) Pour mixture into ramekins (or heat proof bowls).  In each bowl, spoon in red bean as desired.

5) Place ramekins in steamer, steam for 12 minutes or until firm.