Serve these Christmas Pudding Souffles to you guests and you will instantaneously be seen as a culinary genius. People are always impressed by a served a souffle, in fact they are a lot easier than people imagine.
For these tarts we are using two distinct types of apples. Bramley apple for full on flavour, backed up with a dash of good cider. Green apples, Granny Smiths of French Golden delicious provide texture and a hint of freshness to the tarts. These tarts can be made the night before and stored in the fridge. The trick is to glaze and seal the apple with melted butter and lemon to spot the apple discolouring.
How to make – Cheats Chocolate Fondant. The classic restaurant chocolate fondant is a challenge for the pastry chef needing dexterity and exact timing to be served to perfection.
This version is much easier to make and is far more forgiving in cooking and serving as it is made in advance.
The primary flavour is of course chocolate, so be sure to use a superior quality 70-75% cocoa solids chocolate. Cheap chocolate with low cocoa solids will be unable to punch through the butter, eggs, and sugar. This will give you an insipid tasteless dessert.
No fancy equipment needed, we are using tinfoil pudding basins to form the fondants and make then very easy to turn out.
This can be done in the morning for use later. If you want to be well ahead, make the truffles then freeze them so they are ready whenever you want to serve the fondants.
And of course, you could make enough truffles to serve with coffee at the same time. Don’t freeze these though, or the condensation will spoil and coating you roll them in.
Break up the chocolate into small pieces. Place the chocolate in a bowl large enough to take all the ingredients and allow you to mix them altogether. Pour the cream into a small pan and add the butter, vanilla, and salt.
Pop the pan onto the heat and watch it closely until the butter melts and the cream begins to simmer. Now tip the whole contents of the pan over the chocolate in one go and straight away begin to the mix the truffle base together. The heat for the cream should be enough to melt the chocolate and allow it to emulsify together with the butter and cream. When ready cover the bowl and when cool enough, place in the fridge to firm up.
Chefs know this mixture as a Ganache. And if you have ever wondered what that was, Congratulations, you have just made one!
When the mix is firm but not really hard scoop out a little of the chocolate with a teaspoon and roll in the palms of your hands to form a truffle. If you are just making these for the fondants, they don’t need to be perfectly round.
If you are having problems with the chocolate sticking to your hands, rub then with a little flavourless oil. Good for your skin as well!!
Before you start brush the insides of the moulds with soft butter to help the cooked fondants slide out. Don’t miss any areas but also don’t overdo it or you will have melted butter running onto your plates.
Place a heatproof bowl over a pan of hot but not boiling water and add the butter. Let he butter melt slowly over a low heat then once melted add the broken-up chocolate. Melt the chocolate into the butter then take the bowl off the pan and place to one side.
In a second bowl whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy. When ready the mix should hold traces of where the whisk as been. we call this, the Ribbon stage. When ready, sieve the flour and fold into the egg / sugar mix.
Fold the melted chocolate and butter into the eggs and fold together lifting the mix from the bottom. Make sure the chocolate is not too hot (blood heat is perfect) and only mix until the chocolate is barely folded into the eggs. Overmixing will spoil the dessert.
Half fill the buttered tinfoil moulds then place a truffle in the centre of each mould. Now complete the filling of the moulds and place them in the fridge to be cooked later.
My advice is to now ball the ice cream into a cold plate then return it to the freezer. We need to serve the fondants as quickly as possible and have the ice cream ready is a big help.
When you are ready to serve the dessert, have the oven and a baking tray preheated.
Place the fondants directly from the fridge onto the hot tray and cook then on the centre of the oven for 12 to 14 minutes.
When ready the centre of the fondants should still be runny. The cheat is that of course the truffle will melt and form a sauce even if the centre is a little over cooked.
Work as fast as you safely can, turn the fondants out onto plates. Place a ball of ice cream on top of each one, dust with icing sugar and sprinkle with grated chocolate.
As the timing of the fondants is quite important, I would recommend have a test run of the dessert on the family. Everyone’s oven is slightly different in temperature and efficiency. So, the only way to be absolutely sure of the cooking time is to test it.
Cook the fondants as above then take one out at 12 minutes than at 2-minute intervals until you are happy with the result. Be sure to be in and out of the oven as quickly as possible or the oven will cool too much between each test.
Melted butter tents to run down the sides of the mould and sit on the base, frying the sponge as it cooks. It’s also easier to see if you have missed any bits with soft butter.
Chefs call these ‘runouts’ It is simply melted chocolate piped onto nonstick paper and allow to cool. In fact, you don’t even need to pipe it. Just letting the chocolate fall off the tip of a spoon will give you a shape, just not as neat.
Enjoy Life!
John.
Hi, my name is John Webber, award winning chef and tutor, now retired to the west coast of Scotland. Welcome to our blog focusing on food, cooking, and countryside. My aim is to pass on my years of skills and knowledge together with an appreciation of the countryside.
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