Soufflé is one of those French dishes which fills people with dread at the thought of trying to make it. This isn’t necessarily deserved, as the process isn’t much more complicated than making a cake. As a recipe which can be made into either a dinner menu item or a desert menu item, it is definitely a skill worth learning.

What makes making a soufflé difficult is the short time frame you have to make it from the start of preparation to the finished product. As the base ingredient for it is egg white which has to be whisked into a solid mass, once you’ve beaten the egg whites sufficiently to get them into this condition you’ve got a short time frame to mix in the rest of the ingredients and place them in the ramekins.

To ensure that you do this in the shortest time possible, you should do all of the preparation before hand, like covering the ramekins with butter, preheating the oven and placing a baking tray within it, and whatever other preparations specific to the recipe you’re following (it will be different if you’re making a savoury or sweet soufflé).