On French Food Safari on SBS, Vincent Gadan made this amazing looking soufflé. Looked light and fluffy, and the host Maeve O’Meara seemed overly pleased with it too. Having only attempted a Chocolate Soufflé previously, I thought it was a fantastic idea to use raspberries instead of the incredibly rich chocolate or cheese for a soufflé. Have a look below!

Raspberry Soufflé (Vincent Gadan Recipe)
Serves 4

Preparation Time
30 minutes

Cooking Time
25 minutes

Ingredients
softened butter
freeze-dried raspberry powder (see Note)
2-3 punnets of raspberries (I used frozen raspberries but for decoration fresh is preferable)
1 tbsp water
50 g caster sugar
1 tsp (heaped) cornflour
1 lemon, juiced
4 egg whites (125 g)
icing sugar, to dust
rose petals, to serve

Instructions

1. Butter 4 individual soufflé dishes, coating well. Add a generous sprinkle of freeze-dried raspberry powder (or just caster sugar) to each dish and tilt the dishes until the powder covers the butter.

2. Reserve 12 fresh raspberries for decorating the soufflés. Put the rest in a blender and blend to a purée. Sieve the purée and measure out 170 g.

3. Put the water and 30 g of the sugar in a saucepan and heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Mix the cornflour with the lemon juice in a small bowl and add to the sugar syrup along with 170 g of raspberry purée. Bring to the boil and cook for around 30 seconds, until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

4. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Start whisking the egg whites – either by hand or with an electric mixer. Whisk to soft peaks, then add the remaining sugar and keep whisking to a firm meringue.

5. Whisk a spoonful of the egg whites through the cooled raspberry mixture until thoroughly combined. Use a spatula to gently fold the raspberry mixture through the bowl of remaining egg whites until there is no egg white visible.

6. Spoon the mixture into the dishes, filling right to the top. Tap the dishes gently to remove any air pockets, and smooth the tops.

7. Place the soufflés in a deep dish and fill with cold water to halfway up the sides of the dishes. Bake in the oven for 10–12 minutes, until well risen and lightly golden on top.

8. Immediately dust the soufflés with icing sugar and decorate the tops with the reserved fresh raspberries and a rose petal on each. Serve with the remaining raspberry purée, breaking the surface of your soufflé to pour it in.

Impressions

The time consuming part was sieving the purée to get rid of all the seeds because I didn’t have a particularly good sieve, however I think it managed to come together in the end. My only concern was that the soufflé was very sour! The raspberries were extremely tart, so the 50g of sugar probably wasn’t enough in my situation. I’d probably have gone with 150g caster sugar as to be honest I couldn’t really find much sweetness in it. Maybe it’s supposed to be like that, I’m not too sure but I’d prefer some sweetness to come through at the very least.

This raspberry soufflé is also different to the chocolate soufflé which I found to be like a light cake of sorts. The raspberry soufflé on the other hand is wetter in texture, and while the outside will be firm, inside it’s moist and almost pudding like in terms of texture. Worth a try though, hey.