A Successful Week

This week I decided to make an old standby (chocolate chip cookies) and something I'd never made before (souffle). My thinking was, if one was less than successful, I could hedge my bets on the other. Luckily, both recipes I tried went swimmingly. I decided to adapt the cookies from a Betty Crocker recipe, thinking that making substitutions would be less risky with something simple. I used Peta's baking "cheat sheet" to choose the substitutions. I substituted an equal amount of coconut oil for butter, and used Ener-G egg replacer to, well, replace the egg. Overall, the cookies were good (with one taste taster eating enough to give herself a stomach ache), but there were two issues. First, my young Helper accidentally added a fair bit of extra vanilla, so the cookies turned out more vanilla-y than chocolate-y. Second, the cookies were crumbly. Next time, I will add an extra 1/4 cup or so of oil to ensure they stay moist. I was more worried about the souffle, because I have never made, eaten, or frankly ever even souffle anywhere other than on cartoons, where they caused great distress by deflating. Luckily I had no such issues.

Because I had never made souffle before, I thought it best to stick to an established recipe. I made one small adjustment: I used wheat flour instead of gluten-free. The souffle rose about double its original volume, which I was pleased to see. And apparently, souffle tastes a lot like mousse, which I love. My taste tester said it was good, and I thought it was decent, although a little bitter. Putting some fresh fruit like strawberries on top would make it perfect. Next week will be the week of the "cheese"cake, which based on some preliminary research looks fairly time-consuming. I will take advantage of the long weekend to make it, and try my hand at making a vlog to document the attempt. http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookies/77c14e03-d8b0-4844-846d-f19304f61c57 http://www.peta.org/living/food/baking-cheat-sheet/ http://www.sarahbakesgfree.com/2014/09/chocolate-souffles-individual-cakes.html