Archive for May, 2011

Chocolate Dessert or Souffle

For this recipe you need a dark chocolate coating which is called in German “Kuvertuere” or “Couverture” in French. This is not a brand or type of chocolate but rather a term used to describe professional-quality coating chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa butter — at least 32 percent and often as high as 39 percent for good-quality couverture. The extra cocoa butter allows the chocolate to form a thinner coating shell than non-couverture chocolate. Ghirardelli, Hershey’s, Lindt, Droste or Valrhona are offering this coating.

Ingredients Chocolate Souffle (serves 4)
25 g soft butter
25 g flour
5 Kardamom pods or ground kardamom (see also: http://www.cardamomspice.com/)
If you cannot get kardamom use cinnamon or vanilla  instead
125 ml milk
30 g dark chocolate coating (German Kuvertuere available here)
20 g cocoa powder
2 egg yolks
3 egg white
35 g sugar
50 g powdered sugar

Cooking Instructions Chocolate Souffle
- Grease 4 souffle forms or cups (glass) and add some sugar which will stick on the butter; remove sugar which is not sticking.
- Knead butter and flour.
- If you use the pods remove kardamom from pods and crush it in a mortar.
- Chop the dark chocolate coarsly; in a pan heat milk, add the chocolate; add kardamom and cocoa powder as well, while stirring bring it to a boil – add the kneaded flour-butter  but not at once, bit by bit. Let it cool off.
- With a mixer add the egg yolks one after the other  until you have a smooth cream.
- Beat egg white until firm, trickle the sugar into the egg white. Add 1/4 of the eggwhite to the cream.
- Fill the cups or forms until 1 cm underneath the edge. Place them on a dripping pan and add as much hot water so the forms are 2/3 in the water (using the double-boiler method here).
- Bake them for 40 minutes on 400 degrees F (200 C) on the 2. level.
- Take the souffles out and sprinkle them right away with powdered sugar.

Serve the souffle with whipped cream that is spiced with kardamom.