Souffle 101

• Like an angel's food cake, a souffle gets its light and fluffy structure from beaten egg whites. The cake's flavor and body come from flour and vanilla, while a souffle's flour and body come from its thickened base. Savory souffles traditionally use a variation on bechamel sauce, a white sauce made with milk and thickened with flour. Sweet souffles use pastry cream, a versatile pastry chef's custard that uses cornstarch as well as egg yolks for more reliable thickening. If you have pastry cream left over from another project, turning it into a souffle is a practical way to use it up.

Preparing the Pastry Cream

• Pastry cream will keep for several days in your fridge or months in your freezer, so you don't need to start the souffle as soon as you're done with your other recipe. It will be stiff when it thaws or comes out of the refrigerator, so it helps to beat the pastry cream for a minute or two before you proceed. That makes it easier to blend in your flavoring ingredients and, later, the egg whites. Basic pastry cream is vanilla flavored, but you can add caramel, melted chocolate, nuts, liqueurs, concentrated juice or other ingredients for different flavors.

Baking the Souffle

• For every cup of pastry cream you'll need the whites of two to three eggs, beaten to soft peaks. If you have extra egg whites from other baking, every fluid ounce of whites is approximately equal to one large egg white. If you have an extra white left over go ahead and use it, it won't make a big difference. Stir the first third of your beaten whites into the pastry cream thoroughly, and then gently fold in the rest. Pour the mixture into a souffle dish or individual ramekins, greased with butter and lightly coated with sugar. Bake according to your recipe's directions, until the souffle is set but still wobbly.

Cold or Frozen Souffles

• You can also use your pastry cream to make frozen or refrigerator souffles, which are really more of a mousse. These aren't baked, so you'll need to use pasteurized egg whites from a carton for the sake of food safety. Cut pieces of parchment paper and make sleeves inside your individual ramekins, raising their sides by one-quarter to one-half inch. Flavor your pastry cream with any of the same ingredients you'd use in a baked souffle, then fold in the beaten egg whites or a combination of egg whites and whipped cream. Chill the souffles until they're set, and then carefully remove the parchment paper. They'll look as if they'd risen above the ramekins, as a baked souffle would.