- Now I'm gonna show you how
to make a chilled lemon souffle which is a great dessert
in the hot summer months, again, 'cause it's cold, but also, it has this
lemony punch of flavor but it's very light on the palate. All right, now, to make
these chilled lemon souffles, you're gonna need some ramekins or you could use a big souffle
dish and make it family size but I like the little ramekins 'cause everyone gets their own and if you noticed, I
zhuzhed these up a bit with a little popped foil collar. That's because these set up
in the fridge, not the oven and so if you let them
sit with the collar on, you take the collar off before serving and it looks like the souffle
has risen above the rim. Totally fanciful, you
don't need to do that. In fact, if you don't, you'll get an extra
ramekin or two of souffle so it's up to you but
I think it looks cool. All right, so setting those aside, we're gonna get into making
a lemon pastry cream. So this dessert has three components. It has the lemon pastry cream and then you lighten it with egg whites and then you lighten it
again with whipped cream and that is what makes
the souffle mixture. So here I have half a
cup of fresh lemon juice and I'm gonna thicken it
with a packet of gelatin because that's of course how
it'll set up in the fridge. So just sprinkle the gelatin over the top. Now, over the years, we have recipes where you just sprinkle it
over the top of the liquid and you let it sit there. I've found I love whisking it
in just hydrates more easily because with gelatin, you wanna hydrate it and then you want to melt it. So let this sit aside till
it's nice and hydrated. All right, onto the pastry cream part. Okay, in a medium saucepan,
we're gonna add a cup of milk and half a cup of sugar. Whisk this together and we're gonna heat
this up on the stove top over medium low heat. We just want that sugar to dissolve and the milk to get good and hot. That takes a few minutes. Okay and while that is heating up, we're gonna whisk the egg yolk. Now, pastry cream is
traditionally thickened with a ton of egg yolks but because this is a refrigerated dessert and we're gonna rely on the gelatin to help let the souffle set,
we just need a few for richness so that's two yolks. We're gonna whisk it together
with two tablespoons of sugar and a little bit of cornstarch, just a quarter of a teaspoon. That's just a little insurance that the pastry cream will set up. Now, I'm calling it a pastry cream and in reality it's not
an actual pastry cream. It's gonna be much looser than that but it's similar to a pastry cream. All right, now I'm just
gonna sit here and whisk this until the milk is good and hot. All right, you can see what a difference a little whisking made. It's much lighter in color, it's grown a little bit in
volume and that's perfect. Time to check on the milk. All right, the milk is perfectly hot. You can see the steam and all
that sugar has been dissolved. Now we're just gonna temper the egg yolks by slowly adding the milk just slowly bringing them up temperature. If you dumped it all in and whisked it, it just might cook the egg yolks too fast so you wanna very slowly
raise their temperature so they don't curdle. There we go. All right, back into the pot it goes. All right, back to the stove we go. Medium low heat. All right, now we're gonna cook
this for about four minutes. We're looking for the
consistency of this mixture to thicken up a bit, it
looks like heavy cream and most importantly, it's
gonna register 185 degrees on the instant read thermometer. This is the best way
to tell when it's done. So I'm gonna whisk it constantly, take its temperature every so often. All right, there we have it, 185 degrees. That is perfect. All right, now we're just gonna
run it through a strainer. Get any bits of yolk
that might have cooked while it was cooking on the stove. So you just don't want any texture of scrambled eggs in there. All right, I always love to
see what the strainer catches. How good of a job did I do? That is a pretty clean strainer. That's an A plus. Okay. Now is when we add the lemon flavoring so here's two and a half
teaspoons of grated lemon zest and I grated that zest really finely using a rasp-style grater so it has a really delicate texture and last but not least, this
gelatin and the lemon juice. So this is all the lemon flavor. Goes in after you've cooked
it while it's still warm, that dissolves the gelatin but doesn't really cook out
that bright lemon flavor. All right, so that is the
egg yolk, lemon juice mixture pastry cream but not
really a pastry cream. All right and we wanna super chill this before we fold in the whipped egg whites and the whipped cream. So I have a bowl of ice water here. We're just gonna set this in the bowl, leave it out on the counter while we start whipping the egg whites. And now it's time to whisk the egg whites. So here I have five egg whites. Adding 'em right to a stand
mixer just makes it easier. Whisking by hand I did
once in culinary school. It took me forever to get soft peaks. Never gonna do that again. All right, now I'm just adding
a pinch of cream of tartar. That just helps ensure that we get nice tall whipped egg whites and we're gonna use two speeds. I'm gonna start on medium,
get them broken up, get them a little foamy and
then we're gonna crank it up to medium high and add
a little bit of sugar. So starting on medium. Takes about a minute. All right, you can see
that those egg whites are getting a little foamy
and that's a good indication that it's time to crank
it up to medium high and now I'm gonna start to
add two tablespoons of sugar but I add the sugar slowly. Now we're just gonna continue to whip this until we get nice soft lots of peaks and that can take a few
minutes to a few more minutes depending on your mixer. Okay, time to take a look. Oh, you can see, even as I
raised the head of the mixer, we are there so let me
take this off and show you. All right, so let me show you
what I mean by a soft peak. Oh, that's perfect. You can see the peak really
bent around and that's good. So it makes a peak but it's a soft peak. All right, also nice and glossy. Time to incorporate the whipped egg whites right into this lemony custard. So to start, I'm gonna take
about a third of the egg whites. I'm just gonna whisk them
into this custardy base just again to help lighten
it up, help temper it before we fold in the
remaining egg whites. Oh, that looks good. All right, now I'm gonna add
the remaining egg whites. Now, folding. The idea of folding is that you keep as much of
the whipped lightened texture of the egg whites as possible
as you mix it into the base. Over the years, I've folded
a lot of different ways. Pretty particular on what
spatula I like to use to fold because I like a big wide spatula. In culinary school, I watched
my friend chef use his arm, it was a big batch, he
used his whole arm to fold which kinda grossed me out but what I like doing now is
I like using a whisk to fold. So what I do, put the whisk down through
the middle, come up the sides and then let the mixtures fall
together through the tines. I just think this is a really easy way to mix the two together without losing too much air
in those whipped egg whites. All right, this is looking pretty good. A few streaks are okay because we still have to
fold in the whipped cream so I can finish folding in
the rest of the streaky bits of the whipped egg whites when
we fold in the whipped cream. Now, to make the whipped cream, we're gonna use the same mixing bowl. It's okay, you don't need to wash it and that's three quarters
of a cup of heavy cream. Back onto the stand mixer it goes. Lock it in, medium high. Again, looking for soft peaks. All right, I'm seeing the
whisk leave a few trails in the whipped cream. Time to check it. And actually, when it
comes to whipping cream, I like to do the last little bit by hand because it can go overwhipped so quickly. I actually just used the
same beater and used my hand. Mm, yep, there she goes. It happens so quickly. Pulling it out, there's the peak. Falls over but hold itself sideways. That's good, that's a good soft peak. All right, now, gonna gently
fold in the whipped cream again using a whisk to fold
these ingredients together. Go down through the center,
scrape up the side of the bowl and then let everything
fall through the tines and then I'll spin the
bowl with every whisk. Oh, that looks good and fluffy
and it smells so lemony. All right, give the bowl
a quick scrape down. Make sure there's nothing on the edge or the bottom of the
bowl that's not mixed in. Oh no, that looks perfect. All right, now into the
ramekins the mixture goes. To do this, I just use a
big spoon and I take my time and again, we're going right
over the lip of the ramekins into that foil collar so that they'll look nice
and tall when we serve them. Smooth the tops out just a bit. They don't need to be perfectly smooth but I like them to look like
they rose as a unit, you know, when I take off those foil collars. There we have it. Okay, these are ready for the fridge. I'm not gonna cover them in plastic wrap because obviously it would stick
to the tops of the souffles and they need to stay in the fridge for at least an hour and a half
to help them really set up. You can leave 'em in
there for up to six hours but much past that, they
get a little too rubbery so one and a half to six hours is ideal. So these souffle have set
up nicely in the fridge and it's time to unmold them so I'm gonna take off the foil collar. And here, I've had the foil collar just attached with a little
piece of tape so peel it off. Oh. Look at that. I know it's just a silly parlor trick to do those foil collars but
I just think it looks so cool. So it looks like I got a little excited when I was filling these and there's a little schmutz
on the outside of the ramekins. Easy to wipe off with a warm
damp towel before serving. All right, those look
pretty good and clean. Now, time to add a
little bit of a garnish. They don't necessarily need it but I always think it looks pretty. Today I'm gonna use some raspberries. Blueberries also work or
blackberries, strawberries. Oh, three little in the middle. That rhymes. Three little in the middle. Notice how I washed these berries. It's hard to wash raspberries
without them turning to mush and the trick is to fill
a bowl of cold water, add the raspberries, bob 'em gently then pull them out and let
them sit on paper towels. That gets 'em clean and dry without letting them turn to mush which is especially important if you're gonna use 'em as garnish. All right, that looks good. Topped off with a little mint. In culinary school, we weren't allowed to
do this on our platters. You weren't allowed to put, well, inedible garnish was the term like if you're not meant to eat it, it shouldn't be on the plate and I agreed with that for many years until one day I realized
how a little green really just looks good on food so now I'm all in favor
of a little garnish especially little sprigs
of mint on dessert. Plus, makes the room smell good. All right, there they are. Aren't those sweet looking? Great dessert for a hot summer day. Might as well taste one. Oh, you can see that texture. It's nice and firm. Mm. Oh, it is light as air and creamy and then there's that nice lemon zing. It just kind of melts away in your mouth leaving behind just sort
of a sweet kiss of lemon. See you next time. Thanks for watching. What'd you think? Leave a comment below and let me know what you're
excited to cook this week and while you're at it,
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