Cheese Soufflé

First challenge was done on Saturday night; second on Saturday afternoon; then third was on Sunday morning since my sisters and I visited our parents yesterday. However, the night before I did a bit of searching and made some extra preparation using my special printer just in case… 🤓

Early morning I got up around 7AM to start my third baking challenge. For this weekend’s challenge I am baking the Cheese Souffle 🤗 with difficulty level Hard. Apparently with me it’s all about the struggle 😅

First I had to prepare the pan. Lightly cover it with butter, cut out and insert some parchment paper, and wrap the pan with aluminum foil to avoid water seeping in. 

Once the pan is ready, time to get the ingredients. Thankfully I have most it so there were a few things I had to get like cake flour, cream cheese and cream of tartar 😁

Now on to the first interesting part which I’ve never done before in cooking 😯 Since I don’t have a double-boiler, I had to improvise based on other chefs I’ve seen on YouTube 👩🏻‍🍳 First, I boiled some water on a saucepan. While I was waiting for it to boil, on a metal bowl I’ve combined all the cheese mixture ingredients. When the water was boiling, I turned off the heat and placed the metal bowl on top of the saucepan and began to stir the cheese mixture. The heat really helped soften the cream cheese making it really easy to stir 👍🏻

As the cheese mixture cools down, I separated the eggs with my darling new tool. I found this little chick on a YouTube video and instantly fell in love with it❣️ It’s so cute and clever how it separates the egg yolk from the egg whites 🥰

On a small bowl, I mixed the egg yolks with other ingredients and soon combined it with the cheese mixture.

Afterwards I sift the cake flour on to the cheese mixture and mixed it together.

On a separate bowl, I whisked the egg whites and gradually added the sugar mix until it reaches stiff peaks.

When that one was done, I had to slowly add the egg white mixture into the cheese mixture. There was no way it will fit on either bowl so I called in the big boy bowl 💪🏻 Plenty of space to slowly combine the two mixtures 😁👍🏻

Once the mixture is complete, time to put it in the pan I’ve prepared at the very beginning. I had to bang the pan on the countertop to remove excess air bubbles. Now this is another interesting part I’ve never done before. To bake this properly, I had to put the pan in a baking dish (unfortunately I had to buy a bigger one 😓) and pour hot water on the sides. I’m not sure why it’s done that way but I thought it was pretty cool 😃 And there it goes into the oven!

It took nearly 2 hours to bake and having to change the temperature in between ⏲️ When it was finally done, I was not happy when I saw the crack with a slight burnt ☹️ My boyfriend assured me it will be better when it cools down. He also reminded me it’s my first time making it and that I’ll get it right over time with more practice. Hopefully 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

When we got back from groceries, it did settle down a bit so it didn’t look like a giant pimple. Just a deflated one but I can work with this 😅

The last step on the cookbook is to coat it with honey 🍯

However that’s not the final step for me 😏 I knew from the get-go that the Cheese Souffle was going to be hard and I was bound to mess up when it comes to appearance. So last night I decided to take an extra step by adding a ✨design✨ since the one in the cookbook looked so plain. And there’s no better design to use than one of the biggest characters in the wondrous Ghibli collection: Totoro 💖 I’ve searched high 🔍 and low 🔎 for the perfect image and there it was. And now it’s going on my Cheese Souffle to make it extra special 🥰

Man, this came out more more brilliant than I expected! I love it so much ❤️❤️❤️

And for the taste, it’s pretty good! It is a bit on the heavy side like the Princess Pudding because of the cheese but this is light in flavor like the Apple Strudel. It’s a tad bit denser than a Japanese cheesecake and the jiggle is definitely there 😆 Perhaps if it was a a little taller the jiggle would be more visible. It’s a comfort to eat ☺️

Overall it was a really good experience. It’s the hardest I’ve done so far and the most dishes I’ve washed as well 😅 I’m still debating on my next and last challenge for the month. I have one in mind but it can change any time throughout the week. Safe to say it won’t be the Coffee Biscuit (despite how I cosplayed Gaia at the Digital Fanfest). That’s just too easy 🤣 Til then!