Cocoa Coffee Souffle

It was on a lazy afternoon(when I had absolutely nothing to do), that I was flipping through my recipe book. This book was created around 5-6 years back, from a bundle of cut outs from magazines and news papers my parents & I collected over a period of 2 decades. My mom used to cut the recipes and dad used to carefully keep all those cut outs in an old blue briefcase. And often on Sunday afternoons we used to browse through it to see what new can we try for that afternoon.

Years passed by, the collection increased and my parents transfered the responsibilty to me. Thats when I meticulously sorted it out and discarded the once which I would not give a try and pasted and indexed that book for an easy reference. And today because of this reason I consider this book of ours as a Treasure Book.

A small excerpt from my book. Now this book has some handwritten recipes too, which I have either noted when aired on the television or told by my mother over the numerous STD calls we make discussing recipes.

And last week while I was flipping through those pale yellow pages, I came across this recipe of a souffle which I have been eyeing for a long time. I have never tried my hand on souffles ever before. And now because of this blog I had the motivation to try it out.

The one which I thought of trying was the Chocolate Souffle but when I started accumulating the materials required, I found that I just had only 1 tbsp of cocoa whereas it required 3-4 tbsps. Thats when I thought I would alter it according to my availability of products and ended up with a new souffle all together, and I christened it as the "Cocoa coffee souffle".

Ingredients:

• 1/3 tbsp - Cornflour
• 2 tsp - Gelatin
• 1/2 tsp - Instant coffee powder
• 50 gms - Sugar
• A pinch of Salt
• 1 tbsp - Cocoa powder
• 25 gms- Sugar
• 1.5 cup - Milk
• 1 - Egg, separated

Method:

• Separate the egg yolk and egg white into two clean dry bowls.
• Mix together cornflour, gelatin, coffee powder, 50 gms of sugar and salt in a heavy bottomed pan and swtich on the gas, keeping the flame low. Pour the milk slowly into it the pan while stirring the mixture continuously. Pour the milk in installments and not at once.
• Once the entire milk has been stirred in, add the 25 gms of sugar and cocoa into the milk mixture and keep stirring. You will see that the mixture is thickening. Remove the pan from the gas when medium thick.
• Beat the egg yolk with a fork and slowly pour it into the milk mixture. Stir well and keep the pan again on medium heat. Let it start boiling. When you see the first bubble come, switch off and keep the pan onto a tray of ice water. Let it cool.
• Simultaneously, beat the egg white with a beater or whisk and make it stiff.
• When the mixture has completely cooled down, slowly fold the stiff egg white into the mixture with a spatula. You will notice that the volume of the mixture suddenly increases when you add the egg white. That is how it ideally should be. And this is the difference between making a mousse and souffle.
• Now transfer it into small glasses and let it set in a refridgerator till you serve. Serve chilled.
• When serving you may decorate it with grated chocolate, cherry, icing sugar etc.