TWD: Chocolate Souffle

This week's TWD was chosen by Susan of She's Becoming DoughMessTic: chocolate souffle! We just made chocolate souffle for my Sweet Melissa Sundays baking group this past weekend but I didn't really give much consideration to skipping out this week, mainly because (1) the recipe is easy to scale back so I could make minis and (2) I wanted to see how Dorie's recipe compared to the one from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book.

Dorie's recipe is very similar to Melissa's. There were just a few differences: Melissa's recipe calls for butter while Dorie's does not and Dorie's recipe uses milk while Melissa's does not. Melissa's recipe uses orange zest and Grand Marnier for flavoring while Dorie just sticks to the basics - chocolate, sugar and eggs.

I made 1/4 of Dorie's recipe (substituting semisweet chocolate for bittersweet) and divided the batter between two 7-oz ramekins. I baked the souffles for about 18 minutes on 400 F. I knew I wouldn't have much time to get photos of the beautiful puffy tops before they fell so I got everything all set up while the cakes were in the oven. Even with the preparation, though, I found it nearly impossible to get a good shot. I sprinkled on the confectioners' sugar and carried the souffles across the room and wouldn't you know, they were already deflating! They continued to deflate quite a bit more and left me with a nice crispy crust on top. I dug in immediately for a taste and can report that I loved Dorie's souffles! After trying Melissa's the other day I thought maybe I just wasn't a souffle person, but I was wrong! I used the same chocolate for both recipes, but I thought Dorie's souffles had a lot more chocolate flavor. I'll definitely make this recipe again - I think it'd be great for entertaining since you can make individual souffles so easily.