Stephencooks

Okay, I suppose it's cheating to use one post for both the web events Sugar High Friday #13 and Is My Blog Burning? #20 but I couldn't help myself. I've been looking for an excuse to make this adaptation of a dark chocolate soufflé  I developed several years ago for the 2001 Valentine's Day edition of my column "At Table" in Boston's South End News  -- and along came SHF with a Dark Chocolate theme, and IMBB just two days later calling for Soufflés. I didn't need the I Ching to tell me that the time was ripe for the emergence of the Fiery, Dark, Dangerous Chocolate Soufflé.

Sugar High Friday!

Sugar High Friday, now in its 13th edition, which was conceived by Jennifer at The Domestic Goddess, asks bloggers all over the world to post a tempting sweet within guidelines proposed by the month's host, who for this edition is Kelli at Lovescool. This month, Kelli's challenged us to "add a twist to one of your favorite" dark chocolate recipes, and so I've dutitfully complied!

Is My Blog Burning?

Is My Blog Burning?, in its twentieth edition, is the recognized granddaddy of all food web events. Founded by Alberto of Il Forno (see his original post proposing IMBB here) in the dim, prehistoric days when most current participants in the event were still a little foggy about what "blogging" meant, if they had even heard of it. A simple concept (everyone post on the same day a dish within the bounds of a theme proposed by the host), it has become the model for most of the web events now filling our calenders.  This month, the host is the Kitchen Chick, who proposed that we all tiptoe through the kitchen while making a soufflé.

Dark Chocolate Soufflé with a Kick

The most faithful of readers of Stephencooks.com will remember another SHF offering here (for #9) called X-treme Chocolate Tartlet, which was developed for the same 2001 Valentine's Day column as this offering. In that post I explained that I had fallen under the spell of the "Mayan" chocolates created at Cacao, the wonderful handmade candy kitchen down the road from me in Kittery, which combine the lure of dark chocolate with the heat of cayenne pepper. I'm still under that spell, so I adapted my recipe for this soufflé into the fiery version shown here with the addition of some heat. I used to think the addition of espresso to a dark chocolate concoction was a pretty vigorous intensifier before I went down this road,  but now I want to lace every chocolate dessert I know with a little of the Mayan fire!

It took me a couple of tries to get the right amount of cayenne in this recipe, so at the end of this post you can see another style of serving for the dish. No matter how it's served I like a fresh-brewed espresso on the side, along with a well-aged cognac or a good grappa to sip.