At last, I attempted to tackle this one from the Bucket List — learn to make chocolate soufflés. I picked up the missing ingredients from the grocery store a couple of weeks ago and until now, had been too lazy to actually put them together to make something. Yesterday (coincidentally, day 6 of my birthday week), I finally mustered the energy to make baked goods. I pulled out the ingredients, spread them across the kitchen counter and proceeded to get out my nifty, supposedly simple little recipe.

It turns out that I have a steep learning curve in the baking department. As I haven’t done a lot of baking in my time, I wasn’t exactly sure what constituted ‘soft peaks’ in my egg whites or ‘light yellow’ yolks. But what perplexed me even more was how once melted chocolate cooling into a stiff gel was supposed to ‘softly fold together’ with all these whipped up eggs. In reality, there was nothing ‘soft’ about my folding. Though, in the end, I managed to get something that resembled chocolate batter into my lightly buttered and sugar-dusted ramekins.

After placing them into the warm oven for exactly 18 minutes, I went in to see my delightful final product. I will admit at this point that my final product was slightly less than delightful. Although not burnt, I could tell right away that I had cooked the little guys too long. I was going for soft and slightly lose in the middle — almost like a chocolate lava cake but not quite. What I ended up with was evenly cooked (a.k.a. — kind of dry). I decided that was okay. As long as they tasted good, right??

So I dusted the tops with powdered sugar, made them look all pretty, and served them to Steven and me. I had planned to make Steven try it first, so I could take a picture of his reaction. Sadly, he talked me into doing the honors. I have one word to describe my soufflés: bitter. Yep, that’s right. I used bars of 100% baking cacao (no sugar added), thinking I was being all sophisticated and cook-smart. Only, I forgot to make up for using pure cacao by adding extra sugar. Let me just make a suggestion for all you novice bakers out there – don’t EVER do that. Always, always, always make sure you add enough sugar. Even to a chocolate fanatic, there is such thing as too much of a good thing. Chocolate NEEDS sugar!

One might say that my first attempt at soufflés wasn’t exactly a success. It wasn’t terrible.  But I wouldn’t, say, serve this to guests. However, I’m not giving up just yet. Now I’m on a mission. As soon as I figure out the exact concoction I’ll post the recipe. Stay tuned!