Continuing with my soufflé obsession, here we have an iced soufflé. Unlike a chilled soufflé which uses gelatine to stabilise the dish, a frozen soufflé can be much lighter because it’s obviously frozen. The obvious drawback in the average kitchen, I would suggest, is that you need enough free shelf space to sit the dishes for 12 hours.On the plus side, you can make it in advance, and can actually use up those bags of frozen fruit we all seem to have in our freezer. Use the space you free up to set the soufflés! The perfect summer dinner party dish, if we ever get enough sun to truly call it summer…
Ingredients:
600g frozen mixed berries, plus fresh berries to decorate
240g caster sugar
juice of 1/2 large lemon
3 egg whites
400ml water
50ml whipping cream
Method:
- Blitz the frozen fruit in the thermomix with 90g of the sugar, then pass through a fine sieve. Add lemon juice to heighten the taste if required (if you’re not using a thermo, I’d recommend you defrost the fruit a little first to avoid pitting the blades of your machine)
- Prepare 6 individual soufflé dishes (9cm diameter x 6 cm deep) by tying a piece of greaseproof paper around the edge to form a collar that stands 5cm above the rim. (I buy an acetate roll that can be cut to size and taped into place – it gives a smoother finish)
- Put the egg whites into the bowl of an electric mixer
- In a perfectly clean saucepan, dissolve the remaining 150g sugar in the water over a low heat. When the sugar has completely dissolved, bring to the boil, skim off the foam and cook to 120°C/ 250°F on a sugar thermometer.
- Beat the egg whites until foamy, then, with the whisk still running, pour the hot sugar directly on to the egg whites, avoiding the beaters. Continue beating until the meringue is cool.
- Whip the cream until soft peaks form and fold into the fruit pulp
- Delicately fold in the meringue, then spoon into the prepared soufflé dishes. Freeze for 12 hours.
- Decorate with fresh berries and, if you like, serve with a sauce made by puréeing 250g berries with 50g caster sugar, sharpening the taste with a little lemon juice
Serves 6
A couple of notes – I buy acetate roll which can be taped into place instead of the greaseproof paper – it gives a smoother finish. In addition, I buy dehydrated fruit powder and then roll the edges of the soufflé in the mixture just to intensify the flavour, and give a prettier effect. You can buy it here…
You could of course go old school and press chopped pistachios or chopped hazelnuts onto the edge, or grated chocolate. It’s not necessary, it just makes it look as though you have made a little more effort, and gives you an excuse to spend five minutes in the kitchen between courses while you get the coffee on!
This recipe is adapted from the one on The Stylist web site, for the Taste of London show.