[chefravi]

Having some problems with my pastry chef. She is not sure as to the parts and technique to making chocolate souffle made to order. At present we are using pastry cream, callebaute chocolate melted, and sweet egg whites beaten stiff. If we get an order how much of each to have a consistent souffle to bake in 10 minutes. Our souffle dishes are 4" wide, 1 1/2c. volume. Any help would be appreciated.

[thebighat]

Don't listen to me, because I've never made them to order before, but I bet if you browsed through some 70's vintage French cookbooks aimed at American home cooks you'll find recipes that could help you pin down amounts. The typical recipe might call for 4 tb of butter, 3 tb of flour, 1 cup milk, 4 yolks and whites and then tell you what size dish you'll need to bake it in. Shouldn't be too hard to reason it out from there. Of course there may be a way to make a hold a dozen of these, but I've never done it.

[angrychef]

Bistro Garden, a restaurant in L.A. that specializes in made to order chocolate souffles has their raw frozen souffles in grocery store freezers. Working for a catering company, we have used their product and it does rise very well even if the souffle batter is frozen. Since it wasn't as chocolatey as I would like it, I proceeded to make my own and froze them first---it does work very well, just make sure you grease your ramekins and coat with sugar very well.

[chefravi]

Angry Chef,

How long did you freeze your souffle for?

How much time to cook?

What was your recipe approximately?

[angrychef]

I tried the souffle recipe from Professional Baking but just added more chocolate. Froze them from 1 day to a couple of days. Just add a couple more minutes of cooking time. What I would suggest is making up a batch of your own souffles and freeze a couple to see if that will work for you.