This week’s Cooking Eorzea dish was meant to happen weeks ago. Unfortunately, when I ordered a springform pan, it arrived damaged to my home…And I had a hard time finding a replacement one that I could easily get. I ended up having to go to another nearby town to get my hands on one, since I refused to let it ship again with next to no padding.
And then when I was wanting to actually make this dish earlier this week, it turned out that my stand mixer was missing a whisk attachment, and so I had to order that too.
All of which is to say that I was making this dish at nearly midnight on Thursday, and I am currently writing this week’s Cooking Eorzea column well-past midnight. There is a lot of Love, Eorzean Style to this…for sure. But it just has been a calamity of problems in trying to get everything that I need ready, well, ready, to make this week’s column happen so that it can go out in a timely manner.
So, please- enjoy my attempt at making a Cheese Soufflé this week! It definitely serves as a midnight snack, if you’re into that kind of thing.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
The 58th recipe in the cookbook, and the 57th recipe I’ve made for Cooking Eorzea, has a difficulty rating of ‘Hard’ and comes from Eorzea’s La Noscea region! I’ve never made a soufflé, but I remember seeing plenty of cartoons growing up where a soufflé would collapse no matter how hard the characters tried to keep it from doing so.
I’ve also never heard of ‘stiff peaks’ before when it comes to egg whites and a stand mixer, so I ended up having to watch a YouTube video on it so I would know what to look for.
Anyway, here is what a Cheese Soufflé is supposed to look like in the hands of an expert! You’ll notice that this cheese soufflé didn’t collapse:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Cream of tartar is a wild ingredient. It is a byproduct of winemaking, it is used in baking powders, and it prevents sugar syrup from crystallizing. If all that wasn’t enough, it is used to help shape meringues and soufflés…like as in this week’s dish.
It also has absolutely no relation to tartar sauce, which is made from mayonnaise and other ingredients and it is meant to be eaten with fish.
All of these unique properties, in an ingredient that I had never heard of until I started making this week’s Cooking Eorzea dish, makes cream of tartar an incredibly easy choice for Featured Ingredient of the Week!
My Cooking Attempt
This week, I used a lot of dairy-themed ingredients to make the Cheese Soufflé:
First, I cut out a circle to fit my springform pan out of parchment paper.
Using pi times the diameter (9 inches), I wound up measuring out the circumference of the circle and cutting it out after measuring out the depth of the pan.
I then lightly greased the pan with butter before applying the parchment paper pieces to the springform pan. It turns out that I did the math correctly, as it all perfectly lined up with minimal overlap!
Before setting the springform pan aside, I made sure to wrap it up in aluminum foil around the sides, so that there wouldn’t be any water leaking into it when I bake the Cheese Soufflé.
I then got out my eggs. I have separated eggs before, and so I knew to do it cold. I would crack an egg, empty it gently into my fingers, and then let the egg yolk naturally separate from the egg white. I did this six times, and I had no mistakes!
I then placed one of the oven racks on the lower third and then preheated the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Getting out my double boiler, I filled the bottom pot with water and then turned up the stovetop heat to get the water heated up.
I then added the heavy cream, the milk, the butter, and the cream cheese together in a bowl before placing it over the pot with the heated-up water in it. I occasionally whisked it all together to let it blend. The cream cheese and butter melted quickly, no doubt in thanks to them being both at room temperature.
Once it was all completely smooth, I removed it from the heat and I let it cool down completely. This took waaaaay longer than I expected it to, but I made sure to blend in the maple syrup once the cream cheese mixture was ready.
Once that was all blended together again, I set it aside temporarily and I turned my attention to making a mixture with the egg yolks. I added corn starch, egg yolks, lemon juice, and just a pinch of salt together in a new bowl.
I then blended it together before adding it into the dry mixture ingredients.
I then stirred it all together until well blended before adding in the cake flour.
I then whisked in the cake flour. It was a lot more difficult to do than I expected – I was fully thinking that it would be easy to do with cake flour. I was very, very wrong.
Once that was accomplished, I set it all side temporarily before turning my attention to the egg whites. I needed to make ‘stiff peaks’, which is something that I’ve never done before with food. First, I added the egg whites to the blender…
With the whisk head attached, I turned the stand mixer on high until the egg whites started to foam up…
Once the egg whites were foaming up, I slowly added in the sugar and then the cream of tartar…
…And I just let it blend all those ingredients together. While this was going on, I moved the previous mixture over into my large glass bowl, since I wanted to make sure that I would have enough room to do what comes next. Every so often, I would turn off the mixer and remove the head from it to check the status of the egg whites. When they were properly ‘stiff peaked’, I pulled them out of the mixer entirely.
Pulling the bowl off of the stand mixer, I first whisked a third of the egg white mixture into the prior ingredients in their new bowl.
I then gently folded in the second one-third…
Once that was gently folded in, I added in the remainder and gently blended that in.
I then poured it into the springform pan before gently banging it against the countertop several times to remove any excess air bubbles from the Cheese Soufflé batter.
I added another layer of aluminum foil to the springform pan and then put it into a deep baking dish. I filled the pan up roughly halfway with hot water while making sure that none could leak into the springform pan. Once that was accomplished, I removed the springform pan, put the deep dish into the oven, and then gently lowered the springform pan into it. This clever thinking made sure that I didn’t slosh any water around into the Cheese Soufflé.
I then set the timer for 45 minutes.
Once the timer went off, I lowered the temperature to 275 degrees Fahrenheit, and then let the oven go for another 35 minutes.
When the timer went off again, I popped open the oven and saw it was not brown on top. So, I raised the temperature to 325 degrees Fahrenheit, and I let it brown for another three minutes.
Finally, I pulled the deep dish out of the oven carefully, and I removed the Cheese Soufflé from it so it could cool down. It looks like the Cheese Soufflé rose up!
Finally, I brushed the top with honey.
…And here is what my final Cheese Soufflé looks like for this week’s Cooking Eorzea!
I thought that with The Make It Rain Campaign for this year just wrapping up, a Golden Saucer-themed placemat from Eorzea Cafe would be completely appropriate as decor.
This…actually turned out really, really well. It had a slight custard-esque texture to it, and I was impressed with how much the cream cheese, the maple syrup, and the honey really stood out. This had a sweet, mildly cheesy, flavor that worked all the way through.
I think I actually made a successful soufflé!
Afterword
If I was to do this dish again, I would absolutely get a larger piece of aluminum foil to wrap the springform pan with. I was so stupidly paranoid about the water getting in and ruining my Cheese Soufflé. That, and I would probably have some toppings to go along with it – even though it admittedly isn’t ‘recipe accurate’.
But all-in-all? A very successful dish for this week!
This is where I start with the ‘thank yous’. I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, and for creating a sequel cookbook that you can preorder now.
I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look, and being patient with me even when things go wrong when I try to get new equipment to make these dishes with. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You can definitely check him and his works out over on X.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. I keep finding myself drifting back towards this game whenever I have a moment in my life that is free, even though sometimes it feels few and far between…and it isn’t Cooking Eorzea‘s fault, thankfully.
Next Time
I make a Chocobo Cake from the Thanalan region.
I’ve never made a cake before, and I’m genuinely terrified at how it is going to go.
So, you’re going to want to tune in to see how that goes next time on Cooking Eorzea!
Have you made a soufflé before? How did it turn out for you?
What kind of recipes do you want to see in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook Volume 2?
Let us know in the comments below!
