Hot Chocolate Soufflé

After one botched attempt last year and a recent viewing of Good Eats, I was tempted to retry and document the dreaded... Hot Chocolate Soufflé!

What you'll need:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup baking cocoa
• 3 tablespoon flour
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon stick butter or margarine, softened (or spreads with at least 60% vegetable oil)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 large egg whites
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• Pinch o' salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar

Method

More crap you'll need:

Mixing bowls, saucepan and four stoneware ramekins or a four-cup soufflé dish.

A goddamn oven set to 350F (180C) and just to ensure even heating, a pizza stone.

Butter and then lightly sugar the ramekins. You can either just tap the sugar around, or cover the top of the ramekin with plastic wrap and shake it like a redheaded stepchild.

Mix 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup baking cocoa and 3 tablespoons flour in saucepan. Then add 3/4 milk, and heat stovetop to medium-high.

Stir continuously until cocoa mixture starts to bubble, and remove from heat. If you don't keep stirring like I did last time I made a soufflé, you'll end up with a chocolate lump with turd-like consistency. This is how it should look:

Beat 2 egg yolk with a whisk or a fork.

Beat 1/3 of the cocoa mixture into the egg yolks.

Then slowly stir in the rest of the cocoa mixture. If you dump the whole mixture in at the same time, your eggs might just scramble.

Stir in butter/margarine and vanilla, and then set aside to cool slightly.

Beat 3 egg whites, 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar and a pinch o' salt together with an electric mixer until foamy. Then beat in 2 tablespoons of sugar, one tablespoon at a time until eggs are glossy.

At this point, my husband snuck up behind me while I was concentrating on beating the eggs and whispered sweet nothings in my ear. I yelped (like a dog, he says) and nearly dropped the bowl. I bet Julia Child never had to deal with this shit. Bastard.

Back to the eggs. You'll know the egg whites are beaten just right when you can remove the mixers and the egg white forms these sexy double peaks.

Stir 1/4 of the egg whites into the cocoa/egg yolk mixture.

Visually divide the remaining egg whites into thirds, and carefully fold each third in one at a one with a spatula. The more air bubbles you crush, the less awesomely puffy the soufflé’s going to be.

Pour batter into dishes and set timer for 1 hour. WARNING: Don't open the oven door. Don't kick the oven door. Just leave the kitchen all together.

Its 4:55 in the morning. Goodnight, little soufflés.

Beep, beep, beep, beep! Lessee what these bad boys look like. SUCCESS! If the soufflettes don't look quite done, keep em in there for another 5-10 minutes.

There is but one last thing to do. Dribble your topping of choice (whipped cream, powered sugar, Gran Marnier or the less successful Magic Shell™) over the soufflé and dive into the warm chocolately abyss...