S1E4 Technical: Lemon Soufflés

Today's technical challenge is Lemon soufflés!

Before we start today's challenge, I would like to give a huge shoutout to my brother's amazing girlfriend, Josiane, who illustrated the amazing banner and profile image on my blog. If you love them as much as I do, go check out her Instagram and/or her Etsy page! 

Today I had to make four hot lemon soufflés.

Going into this challenge, I was very cocky. Everyone on the show messed at least one thing up in this challenge; either the soufflés didn't rise, or they weren't mixed properly, or they were missing ingredients. So, I figured that the bar was set pretty low and that as long as the soufflés tasted good I would be okay.

Soufflés are supposed to be eaten before they fall, which means that you're supposed to eat them within minutes of them coming out of the oven. I invited my brother and Josie over to be our guest judges for the day.

I was able to take the recipe straight off the episode again! This is the second time that the cameraman has gifted us with a shot of the recipe for the technical. It got cut out a little at the end, but I had watched the bakers complete this challenge on the show already, so I figured that I would probably be okay.

Time starts now!

The first thing that I did was separate my eggs. I had forgotten to take the eggs out of the fridge ahead of time, so I hoped that by separating them first, they might warm up faster. 

Next, I measured out my butter and flour in a saucepan and turned the stove on. Meanwhile, I measured out my milk, and slowly whisked it into my flour and butter mixture.

Once the mixture was starting to thicken, I realized that the next step was to add my lemon zest and juice, which I hadn't yet prepared. I quickly turned the heat off and ran over to zest and juice my lemons. 

I ran back over to the stove, reheated the rue until it was thick and added the lemon zest and juice, whisking it until it started to thicken again. I took it off the heat and added the caster sugar.

I was working very fast for this challenge, so I couldn't stop to pose for Evie, resulting in blurry photos. Sorry.

I left the mixture to cool while I whipped my egg whites and lined my ramekins with butter and caster sugar.

It was then time to add the eggs to my batter, but my batter was still too warm, so I improvised.

I then whisked in the egg yolks and folded in the whites in batches until the batter was smooth and there were no lumps left.

The lemon mixture was still warm when I mixed in the eggs, so I was a little bit worried that the eggs were not mixing in properly. Nevertheless, I poured the mixture into the ramekins and levelled them out. 

I was getting nervous at this point because I only had twelve minutes left and I had no idea how long they needed to bake.

The soufflés then went quickly onto a tray in the oven.

And then I watched and waited. As far as I knew, they needed to bake until they reached their "peak rise". I only had about nine and a half minutes to bake them, so I just hoped that that would be enough.

Time for complete honesty hour. I went overtime. By two minutes. I would have taken them out when the time ran up, but I could sense that they needed more time and I didn't want to waste them. So...

Time: 42 minutes

I'm kicking myself because I know that these would have been completed in time if I had prepared all my ingredients before starting. But WOW these were so tasty. Like fluffy clouds mixed with lemon curd. I was very impressed. 

The only issue (aside from the time) was that there was a slight separation at the bottom of the soufflé. Essentially this just meant that once you got through the beautiful airy soufflé, there was lemon curd waiting for you at the bottom. Could be worse, honestly.

I would definitely make these again but without the time limit.