Make This Brown Butter Chocolate Soufflé for Passover

Soufflés, according to Claire Ptak, owner of London bakery Violet, don’t deserve their fussy reputation.  “I am obsessed with soufflés. I love them,” she says. “People have this idea that they’re really really difficult, and I think they’re actually one of the easier things to make.”

Enter: Ptak’s Brown Butter Chocolate Soufflé. As she developed this dessert for our April issue, she was inspired by the flourless chocolate cakes often made for Passover. This recipe is made without wheat or flour, but instead of being dense, it’s light as air. Ptak’s soufflé uses bittersweet chocolate and Dutch-process cocoa to build a robust, chocolaty base. Brown butter offers a complementary nutty, caramelized flavor. And the addition of dark rum supercharges everything.

If you’re still seeking some soufflé confidence, Ptak has a few tricks. Buttering the baking dish is integral to getting the highest rise. You’ll brown a whole stick of butter, then brush that up the inside edges of the dish, as well as along the rim, encouraging a handsomely tall soufflé. “The butter kind of trains the mixture where to go, and helps it rise straight up,” Ptak explains. 

Timing, she says, is also key. No one wants to be stuck in the kitchen, away from their friends, while they work on dessert. Luckily, a soufflé comes together quickly. Ptak’s advice is to plan ahead—the chocolate mixture can be prepped and kept in a warm area, and egg whites can be separated and held at room temperature too. This way all you have left is beating those egg whites (unless you, like me, foist that part onto a younger cousin), and throwing the whole thing into the oven. 

In soufflés, egg whites work as the sole leavening agent. “It’s all about the aeration,” Ptak says. The tiny air bubbles that are beaten into the whites expand in the hot oven, and those enlarged air bubbles are what give a soufflé its bouncy, plush structure. That said, it’s important to get those beaten egg whites to the right consistency: “You want to whip them so that they hold these peaks, but you don’t want them to be so stiff that it’s too difficult to fold them into the custard,” Ptak says. 

But most important of all? A cool head. Trust the process, and remember: Eat it right away. As soon as it’s out of the oven, serve warm with a scoop of ice cream—or crème anglaise, or whipped cream, or straight-up cream—and sit back while compliments roll in. 

“It’s so light and airy,” they might rave. “Its profound chocolate flavor is enhanced by the aromatic brown butter,” one particularly effusive guest may exclaim. Your only job is to smile graciously, knowing this show-stopping dessert wasn’t nearly as difficult as everyone assumes. 

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