Rise and Shine!

To rise and to shine...Well that was the goal but I didn't succeed at it that well. The challenge for the month of November for daring cooks was a souffle. I had never made one but growing up I had them all the time. My childhood best friends parents made an egg souffle about once a week for dinner and they were always so good and fluffy. I always dreamed that I would make one as good as Christine Bickson would make but she must of had the "touch" that i don't :-(

I wanted to make a savory souffle since this was a daring cooks challenge and not a daring bakers challenge but I was hosting a dinner and needed to conquer this souffle so what better time than to test on my friends and make them eat my experiment.

I made a chocolate souffle, and as always, I changed the recipe up a little bit from what they told me. It wasn't a big change, but it may have been the culprit of what mess the whole thing up! Instead of buying dark chocolate I decided to use the semi-sweet chocolate chips from the 5 lb bag i already have... I prefer things a little sweeter so I didn't think it would change the recipe that much.

Anyway, the final product tasted fine but i always remembered it being much fluffier and not like a cake texture. I have posted the recipe below.... hope fully it is a much better product for you than me!
GOOD LUCK


Just the cocoa powder that lined the souffle dishes

  Chocolate Souffle

FOR THE DISHES:
2 tbsp unsalted butter
cocoa powder

FOR THE CREME PATISSERIE
2 tbsp flour
2 tsp caster sugar (super fine sugar)
1/2 tsp corn starch
1 medium egg yolk
1 medium whole egg
4 tbsp milk
5 tbsp heavy cream
3 oz dark chocolate (this is where i used semi-sweet chocolate chips)
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

FOR THE EGG WHITES

poppin them in the oven


6 medium egg whites
6 1/2 tbsp caster sugar

Directions:

1. heat oven to 375 degrees
2. Take four 1 cup souffle dishes and brush them with softened butter. tip a little cocoa powder into each dish, roll the dish around tilting it as you do so it is evenly lined all around.
3. For the creme patisserie, mix the flour, sugar, and corn starch into a small bowl. Put egg yolk and whole egg into a medium sized bowl, beat lightly, then beat in half the flour mixture to give a smooth paste. Tip in the rest of the flour mixture and the cocoa powder and mix well.
4. To make the ganache, pour the milk and cream into a pan and bring just to the boil. Remove from the heat. Ass the chocolate and beat until it is melted and smooth with no lumps.
5. Gradually stir hot chocolate ganache into the paste from step 3. This is your creme patisserie.
6. Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks with an electric whisk. Sprinkle in the sugar as you are mixing. Keep whisking to give stiff, firm peaks to give volume to souffles.

Out and sunken already :-(

7. Stir about 2 tbsp of the beaten egg whites in the creme patisserie. Carefully fold in a third of the rest, cutting through the mixture. Fold in another third (take care not to lose the volume), then fold in the rest.
8. Spoon the mixture in to the dishes and makes sure the surface is flat and even. Wipe away any excess around the dish, as it will burn while cooking.
9. It suggests to bake the souffles for 15-17 minutes but i am suggesting to bake a little less like 13 minutes. that way it will be a little softer in the middle and will be more like a molten cake. so when they are done they should be set on the top, jiggle a little, and rise about 2/3rds.

Well there you have it! That is the recipe I followed along with my picture documentary. I bet with a little more attention and a little less wine and not hosting a dinner party,  it would have been DELICIOUS!

....never thought I would make DOUGHNUTS!

Truly I never thought I would ever make anything fried, let alone eat it, but what a treat these pumpkin doughnuts were. I have a major sweet tooth but not for doughnuts, so when the challenge was posted on the daring bakers website I thought, "I will probably never do this again but lets see what happens."

The first thing that everyone asked me when I told them I had to make doughnuts was, Can you bake them? the answer is YES but I decided that i would fry them because that was the real challenge here, not the actual making of the doughnuts.

We had a few options of what we could make, 1. Yeast Doughnuts or Raised. 2. Cake doughnuts or Old Fashioned. 3. bomboloni or Jam filled Doughnuts. 4. Pumpkin Doughnuts.... Ding ding ding and the winner was Pumpkin doughnuts. Tis the season right?

I knew I was going to be sending my doughnuts away with my roommate to take to her work at Seattle Children's Corporate so i wanted them to be really good but mostly i just wanted to get rid of them. I mean really? what would i do with 24 doughnuts and 24 doughnut holes? having a roommate who works at a large office has given me more inspiration than ever to bake.

Thankfully I got rave reviews from everyone and would love to make these delicious treats again on a cold day.

Recipe; credit of Daring Bakers:

I made a few changes because i was too lazy to run to the store. please see below for changes...

PUMPKIN DOUGHNUTS

Preparation time:

hands on prep time: 15 minutes

Chilling time: 3 hours

Cooking time: 10

Yield: About 24 doughnuts & 24 doughnut holes

Disclaimer : They tasted much better than they look in these pics.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

4 teaspoons Baking Powder

1 teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon ground

1 teaspoon ginger ground **

1/2 teaspoon Baking soda

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon Cloves

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons butter

1 large egg

2 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon Buttermilk **

1 cup pure canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

Canola oil ( one regular sized bottle)

** these signify the changes i made. I am not a big spice person so I did not have ground ginger and ground cloves on hand so i just winged it with other yummy festive sounding spices that i had in my spice rack. GO a head and see what you can find in your spice rack and get creative. The second thing I changed was the buttermilk. I directly exchanged it for sour cream. I had sour cream but not buttermilk but later found it in the back of my fridge. I knew that sour cream was some what like buttermilk so I researched it and found that it can be exchanged for the exact measurement.. perfect for the lazy me!

Directions:

1. Whisk together first 8 ingredients in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in large bowl until blended. Beat in egg, then yolks and vanilla. Gradually beat in buttermilk and pumpkin. Using rubber spatula, fold in dry ingredients in 4 additions. fully combine and cover with plastic and chill for 3 hours.

2. Sprinkle a dry surface with flour and roll out 1/3 of the dough to about a 1/2 inch thickness.

3. using a standard size cup, press out doughnut rounds and using a tall and thin shot glass, press out the doughnut hole. BE creative and decide what you can use in your kitchen. You can buy cutters but seriously, what would be the point?

4. lay out paper towels for the doughnuts after they have been fried to drain off the oil.

5. Pour oil in a dutch oven and heat to 365 degrees. make sure it stays around this temperature and by keeping the oil a little hotter at first helps because the cold dough will decrease the temp. Fry the doughnuts and doughnut holes until they  are golden brown, about 2 minutes a side.

6. Once cooled make the glaze

7. Glaze:

2 Cups Powdered Sugar

4 Tablespoons of Whipping Cream

Add cooled Doughnuts to the bowl and coat.

THERE YOU HAVE IT! Delicious pumpkin doughnuts! yummy yummy