Night of the Soufflés

This year, a posse formed between me, Israeli Sony PST co-worker Danny, Jenny (whom I met at a Hike The Geek party, and Bill, Jenny's long-haired ex-boyfriend. It happened spontaneously when we all went to see a puppet show / opera (?) based on the Victorian novelette, Flatland suggested by Jenny (who took Bill) and to which I invited Danny. After that, it became a common occurrence for us to email each other random activities or restaurant suggestions and occupy our evenings and weekends with them. We've seen a musical about terrorism (The Beastly Bombings), eaten at Cafe Mozza, seen Korean and Anime films, enjoyed fireworks, and tried countless other eating places in the Los Angeles area.

But this week, Bill surprised Danny and me by demonstrating his baking skill. On the menu? Chocolate soufflés.

Now for some reason, soufflés have this myth of being really difficult to make. I remember a Captain Kangaroo episode where he was concerned about there being too much noise ("shhhhhhh!") during his soufflé baking. The ingredients are simple, the prep-work uncomplicated... but getting the desired result? An Art!

Fortunately, ours came out fine, if perhaps not as loose and runny on the inside as Bill would have liked. Bill had asked us if we wanted whipped cream, and both of us immediately assumed he meant the aerosol can variety -- but no! He whipped up some cream in his Kitchenaid™, of course.