According to my mother, it's all in the folding of the egg whites. Before I could even get to that, I had to get those egg whites to form 'stiff peaks'. That's not a sexual innuendo. Soft peak, stiff peak, I just want it to look like Julia Child did it herself. This is something that takes patience. Even with my magical best friend mixer (thanks, Kitchenaid) it took a lot longer than I expected. Eventually I got this result:
And that was good enough for me.
The concept of folding egg whites so just enough air gets in also scared the bejesus out of me. What if I folded too much? Or not enough? Baking is science. I never said I was a scientist.
Regardless, I forged on and the result was magical. Prior to making any of the actual soufflé, Curtis Stone instructed me to do all sorts of things. Like make a raspberry sauce that resulted in 2 cups of deliciousness but you only really need like 4 tablespoons to paint the inside of the ramekins. The bastard.
After pouring the batter in and putting them in the oven, I thought I had enough time to start cleaning up. Again, Curtis was pulling one over on me.
Not only had they risen, but the tops were already beyond golden and I was about to rip them out of the oven until the nightmares of the beauties smashing down came back to me. That didn't happen. I wasn't even gentle. I pulled them out and served them right away... I wish I had taken a picture of the inside. They were absolutely perfect. I would eat soufflé every day if I didn't have to deal with stiff peaks.
Why so fancy?
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