Chocolate Mocha Souffle w/Coffee Ice Cream
Today was the last day of a 3 day weekend and here in beautiful NE Ohio, the weather has gone from a stiffling 94 on Saturday, to a balmy 64 on Monday and now, at last I am happy. You can keep your 94 degrees, I am a cool weather girl. If we could stay this way through to the winter months I’d be content. When the temp is in the upper 80′s or beyond, cooking is the last thing I want to do. But today, today was ideal for playing in the kitchen. I started the day with a big pot of homemade chicken barley soup and then, cleared the decks and got busy. First up was coffee ice cream (my hard working hubby’s absolute favorite). A simple process, made simpler by always having my ice cream machine in the freezer and ready to go. This recipe called for steeping a cup and a half of fresh beans in 1.5 cups of milk (I use fat free) 1/2 cup sugar and 1 cup cream.
Temper in two egg yolks place back on the heat and stir until it thickens. From here you simply strain the mixture into a bowl where you have 1 more cup of cream, put some plastic right on top to prevent a skin and chill the whole thing down over an ice bath and then in the fridge. Churn in your ice cream machine, remove to freezer proof container and freeze. The entire process takes less than 20 minutes not including the chill down time. Now even though our chicken barley soup was a humble and simple dinner, I wanted the dessert to be worthy of a 3 day weekend so I went for an equally simple dessert that would still say WOW. I began by melting 4 oz of good dark chocolate and 1.5 oz of unsalted butter into a heat proof bowl over simmering water. Be careful you use a paper town to keep the condensation down or your mixture will sieze up and be useless.
A word here about ingredients. If you are thinking that you can use semi-sweet morsels, margarine and imitation vanillia in this reciepe and get good results, please STOP. There are no substitutes for great ingredients. I only use Madagascar Vanillia that I purchase at UrbanHerbs at the West Side Market. You can order from them on line at www.urbanherbsonline.com or find these products near you. You can expect to pay $8 to $12 a bottle but you will not be disappointed. Real beans are $10 for one in the grocery store but I buy 5 at a time for $1.99/each. You will transform your baking by paying attention to ingredients.
Once the chocoalte and butter have melted I added some instant coffee and vanillia that I had mixed together along with a pinch of kosher salt. While this mixture was cooling, I buttered and sugared 4 ramekins, drawing the butter up the sides with a pastry brush creates lines that the sugar adheres to. This then creates little channels for the souffle to climb up. A great trick I learned from one of my culinary instructors. Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks are then gently folded into the cooled mixture and placed into the ramekins. I only baked 2 of them and wrapped the other two in plastic for a treat tomorrow after a hard days work. Here are the souffles before and after the oven.
The final step was to place two small scoops of the coffee ice cream into the center of the hot souffle. The results are a fabulous, light as air dessert and a part creme anglaise, part ice cream extravaganza! With a minimum amount of time and effort, you too can make this stunning dessert. Send me an e-mail for the complete recipe.
