Souffles au Fromage! (Cheese Souffles)

Again...did not realise how long this recipe took but...wow! It was it worth a 10.30pm dinner! On Sunday evenings we are not usually both home until just past 8 so to start cooking then, means eating an extremely well-longed for meal.

 Forgive the rather rubbish photograph that fails to do this dish justice at all: tired, hungry and cranky as a result: i wasn't in the mood for playing with my camera much! (Sorry Jules!)

So firstly...why, why, why!...don't we have a whisk any bigger than a tube of lipstick?

Most people know that to make any kind of soufflés, it requires a hell of a lot of whisking! The key to souffles are getting that air into the mixture evenly so that they rise into a fluffy textured bun that will lightly melt in your mouth (if you get it right). This requires whisking up egg whites into 'stiff white peaks' Everyone imagining mountains? (If you've never seen this before, i'd recommend watching the Paris Kitchen episode that shows her making cheese soufflés before you start. Theres no room for slacking on this one! Too many times i cried at Julia, "okay thats enough, show mercy! I'm sure it'll work, it looks peaky to me!" Relentless...merciless...she pushed me to keep whisking but took over when her fitness brain probably realised i was about to do myself a repetitive strain injury in my wrist.

Me...armed with a fork.
 Julia...armed with a hot chocolate whisk  ...for mice.
As the clock ticked 22.00hrs, we battled on...

Now i'm not about to give away all of Rachel Khoo's secrets, (you should buy the book and follow us through it!) but it's important to note that the key mixture to her cheese soufflés...is a béchamel sauce. Was that a trumpet i hear blowing in the distance? I took care of this part whilst Jules prepared the dishes and decided what pleasing shapes we were going to cook these in. Not having quite the right muffin shaped tin...we went for slightly smaller, bite sized soufflés from an average cake tin. We decided it was a stroke of genius actually: they'll cook so much quicker! :P

Don't forget to read up on Rachel's recipe when turning the béchamel Sauce into a Mornay sauce. Basically...remember to add the cheese. After chilling ours in the fridge for almost too long, i realised that all the cheese i'd painstakingly grated earlier (why is our cheese grater also made to fit the kitchen requirements of a mouse?) was still in the bowl and not melted into our key mixture? We almost had plain soufflés for late Sunday night dinner. Probably would have been better for the nightmares...

The correct amount of chilling will turn your sauce into the thicker texture of a cake mix so stick to the books on this one. Don't follow our bad example and simply wait until it feels cool because you're so hungry that your stomach is shouting rebellious insults at you.

Despite this, after mixing in half the peaky egg whites and gently folding in the rest and cooking our soufflés, they were an absolute mouth watering success. I couldn't get enough of them! I ate way too much for a late night dinner and justified it because..."they were light" :D
 I'd be so rubbish at dieting.

Now, i added bacon to half of the bite size soufflés that we made. Like most of the additions i make to Rachel Khoo's recipe's...this wasn't necessary...but she asked us to use a 'strong flavoured cheese' like comte. All we had was your average cheddar...justifed. Again! :P

Every English citizen knows you can't beat the simple flavour combo of cheese and bacon...
Oh and one more tip...
                   I'm pretty sure that our time spent cross legged on the floor in front of the warm amber light, watching our 'buns in the oven' and whispering 'ahh they grow up so fast' really paid off. Perhaps the love we poured over them here made up for the amount of mistakes we (okay: I) made during the preparation process.

Learn by bad example? Sorry guys!
 (But seriously...bacon...good idea)