My first souffle!!

5 cheese souffle.

It was a success!! The picture above was shot just when it came out of the oven.

Souffles deflate quickly. I did take other pictures but it started to slump a few seconds later but who cares because I just made my first souffle!

The souffle came out steaming and it was like eating a warm, cheesy/eggy cloud. It tasted incredibly decadent and delicious.

My arm is also going to be very sore from hand whisking the egg whites:-)

I used a combination of this recipe and this recipe.  

And I used a finely shredded cheese mix I had on hand.

I don't have an exact recipe because I was a bit frazzled trying to get everything right.

But the process is essentially three steps.

1) Melt the butter in a pan over med-low heat and sprinkle in the flour. Whisk until combined and it turns a dark yellow. Take the pan off the heat and drizzle in the hot milk and whisk smooth. Then slowly drizzle in 5 whisked egg yolks (room temperature) and stir until everything is smooth. Lastly, add in the cheese and stir gently until combined.


2) Whisk 5 egg whites briskly until they form soft peaks. This step takes a while and your arm will be tired at the end. As long as there are zero bits of yolk in the egg whites you will eventually get soft peaks to form.


3) Very gently fold in the egg whites into the cheese sauce. The folding is very important. You just spent 10 minutes getting your egg whites to peak (if you are a poor shlepp like me and you don't have an automatic mixer) so you don't want to ruin all your hard work at this step.

Then it goes into a 8" casserole/souffle pan and cooks in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes. Resist the urge to peek because that will make it deflate. This was the hardest part for me.


I only had a 5" round pan so I had left over mixture.


I also cooked an artichoke (boiled in water for 45 minutes) and made some mustard dip (2 Tbsp. of dijon mustard and 1 tsp. of Veganaise).

I love anything that involves dipping into a thick creamy sauce over and over.

I am definitely going to make this again. It was much easier than I thought. 

And next time I will include a recipe :-)

Bad Bananas and Oats

This morning I woke up to this horrible sight.

 My mother would always make banana bread with over ripe bananas but I had a better idea. I wanted to use these ugly shriveled things but I didn't necessarily want to be the one that eats them...

And so enters the idea of an oat cake. I decided on a savory oat cake for me and some banana/peanut butter oat cakes for the dogs. 

Oats are a great source of manganese, magnesium, zinc and selenium and baked up as a cake/cookie - they are a great way to get a little bit of extra nutrients into the dogs.

I started by cooking Irish oatmeal for 30 minutes and let it cool. Then it was time to add the extras.

 For my version I sauteed 1/4 of a yellow onion in olive oil. After the onion became translucent I added in some garlic, dried basil, sage, thyme and black pepper.


The dogs got this in their mix. 

Bananas, peanut butter and honey.


I did forget to mention that while the oats where cooking I mixed in a tablespoon of coconut butter (which I ordered from Open Sky store at KathEats - thanks Kath!)


Enter the egg

I added about 1/3 of the beaten egg to my mix and the rest to the dogs mix. 


But at this point both mixes were too wet and my mix looked a little lacking - and so enters - 

A bit of panko added to each mixture (if your dog(s) are sensitive to wheat you can substitute potato flour) and I had some fun with the Laughing Cow cheese.

A little surprise hidden in each of my cakes!


I made the dogs cakes a bit smaller since I wanted them to be snack size rather than meal sized.

They went into a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes. 


And here they are fresh out of the oven

The dogs banana/peanut butter cakes

My savory and cheesy oat cakes.

The dogs version came out of the oven redolent with the smell of peanut butter - Connor came running like a shot! Abby was more interested in my savory cakes - she is not the crazed peanut butter fiend that Connor is :-)

My cakes were crunchy on the outside and nice and moist on the inside - the nugget of cheese did add a nice touch - but I didn't add any salt into the oats - I think my savory cakes could have used a dash of salt. 


I am having a craving for sushi - and fish is Abby's favorite - I will see what I can come up with for dinner...