Soufflé au Chocolat- Day 1

    For the first recipe of this series, I decided to make a delicious french dessert that would not take too much of my time. As I flipped through the pages of the famous recipe book, I stumbled upon this breathtaking chocolate dish.  I quickly finished eating dinner as I was impatiently awaiting the baking part of the night. 

Preparations:  Before diving straight in, I thought it was best to first read over all the directions in the recipe in order to be more familiar with what I was going to need and what I was about to do. As I read the directions, I realized how simple and easy to understand they were which was definitely a very helpful. After skimming everything over, I took all of the ingredients out and set up a clean and clear station to work with. 

Time: The famous french recipe took around 45 minutes to prepare before putting into the oven. Setting the oven to preheat at 425 degrees Fahrenheit took approximately 10 minutes and once everything was ready and in the oven, it took about 35-40 minutes to bake. Once the timer rang, I checked whether it was cooked enough and it was so I took it out and let it cool for 10 minutes. 

Realizations: As I moved forward with the recipe, I was obliged to recruit my mother as a helper as baking was harder than I had anticipated. As I had never baked much before, I quickly realized that baking took much more multitasking than I had ever imaged. There were many different things that needed to be happen at the same time and being everywhere at once was very difficult to do successfully do by myself.

Egg yolk and chocolate

 Mistakes:  After following the first step, I put the chocolate in a pan as I waited   for it to melt. The recipe said to add 1/3 cup of coffee and without thinking I         immediately put 1/3 cup of coffee grains inside the pot with the melted   chocolate. The grains never dissolved with the chocolate making it a little crunchy and taking over the entire taste of the chocolate. So as a result of the coffee mistake, the chocolate soufflé became more of a coffee soufflé. There was no going back so I all had to do was accept my mistake and continue on with the recipe. Another mistake I made during this baking process was that my bowl where my final product would bake in was too small and so after baking in the oven, the soufflé came out over flowing. 

Chocolate in pot beginning to melt 

Next Time:  I definitely see myself making this yummy dessert again, but for the next time I want to make sure that I do not mess up the coffee part of the recipe because as much I like coffee, LOVE chocolate much much more. I intended to practice this recipe and the next time I decide to make it, I will be more prepared and will know what to expect.

Conclusion:  This recipe was one of the simplest recipes I've ever had to follow and I would rate it a solid 8.5/10(because of the coffee instruction). The directions made everything very easy to follow and execute. I now know that I will be recruiting my mother as a co-chef for the majority of these recipes. The final product, even though was a little messy, was extremely delicious and would have been even better without the extremely strong taste of dark coffee. I am beyond excited to continue using Julia Child's recipe book as I've had a first great impression and definitely recommend this specific recipe. 

Messy final product