Monday, October 25, 2010

Parmesean Cheese Souffle



I caught an episode of Five Ingredient Fix on the Food Network this weekend and was inspired to make a souffle with a ceasar salad, making the dressing from scratch. It was pretty easy. The picture above is not my souffle, but looks very similar to the one that I made. Joey was a big fan. You should try making it. It was pretty simple and tasted great!

Also, I wanted to let you guys know that the Grub Street fair was pretty awesome, if crowded. We had a lot of tasty treats. We enjoyed food from quite a few vendors, including, Pies and Thighs and Luke's Lobster.

As I promised last post, I am adding a quick note about a cake I made last week. I had wanted to enter the cake in a competition, but the frosting came out a bit grainy. It was my fault for having bought the wrong chocolate and then trying to fix it with granulated sugar. I gambled that the sugar would melt with the chocolate but the chocolate melted much faster. I may actually go with a totally different frosting next time, as it was perhaps too rich for a three layered cake. I guess that's why they call it devil's food cake. When I make this cake again I will try a lighter chocolate frosting.

On a final note I present you readers with a perplexity I encountered while baking this cake. As with all butter cakes, one must beat the sugar and room-temperature butter together to make a fluffy base, to which yolks are later added and other wet ingredients. Then dry ingredients must be gently mixed in. The less you mix, the more moist, hence better, your cake will be. Yet, if you are very gentle, with a thick wet-base as devil's food cake, how do you prevent flour bubbles? I had to bake this cake twice. The first time the cake was very moist, but it had little pockets of unmixed flour. The second cake had virtually no pockets of flour, but was also drier than the first. How do I keep the moistness and get a perfect texture?

It took Maybelle three days to eat this, it was so rich.

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