recipe help

Hi

I've already put this together, and think that in no way is it going to be a souffle, but I have this recipe that just doesn't make sense. Part is that it's translated from Spanish, but unless Spanish cooks are smarter, or I'm missing a whole lot of obvious, they left out about 20% of the recipe.

It lists ingredients:
egg yolks
sugar
butter
chocolate
egg whites (fewer than yolks)
Idiazabal cheese
double cream (I used whipping)
sugar

So far so good. I paraphrase below, changing words and leaving some out, but each step is as complete as they had it in terms of the instructions

Beat egg yolks and sugar
Melt chocolate and butter
Slowly mix in the cheese and cream. when mixture is well combined, add in the egg whites
Pour the mixture into buttered and floured ramekins
Chill overnight
Bake (time, temp)

They call it a souffle. Where's the leavening? Do you beat the egg whites or whip the cream? When does the chocolate (or egg yolks) get mixed in? Why does it need to chill 24 hours? I assumed you grate the cheese, mix chocolate into egg yolks, then cream into that, and do not beat the whites (I'm concerned about that last assumption, but they'd fall overnight anyway). I think what I'm going to end up with is a gummy, flat, flourless chocolate cake with cheesy overtones. I know already it will be a bit less rich because I don't have double cream. Do they sell that anywhere in Chicago? I wanted to get the cheese at The Cheese Stands Alone, but they didn't have this variety.

Sigh.

I personally would have beaten the egg whites, as the recipe looks like a pretty standard souffle (plus cheese). The egg yolks and melted chocolate are parts of the base. Once a souffle is prepared (whites folded into base), it can be portioned into ramekins and parked in the fridge for at least a couple of days without problems (it won't fall...a pinch of cream of tartar can provide insurance for the paranoid). But refrigeration of the unbaked souffle is a convenience, not a necessity, so I don't know why it's specifically called for here.

I doubt you'll get much of a rise when you bake your dessert. My guess is that you'll end up with something closer to a firm custard than a torte. If that possibility scares you, you could just skip the baking and call it a mousse

The cheese really throws me off in this recipe. I've made and eaten plenty of cheese souffles in my life, and made and eaten fewer, but plenty of chocolate souffles in my life. But I've never made a chocolate cheese souffle. I googled Idiazabal cheese because it didn't immediately ring a bell...I thought maybe it was a mild soft cheese, might make sense with the chocolate, but it sounds as if it's a hard, sharp cheese, which gets a little strange. But living in Chicago, we're no stranger to odd food pairings...

That said, traditionally when you make a cheese souffle you need to make a roux as the base, then you make a white sauce and incorporate the cheese to make a cheese sauce. It's the only way the cheese will get evenly incorporated. (It's no different than macaroni & cheese, for example...remember the case a few months ago when the New York Times published a recipe for the World's Best Mac & Cheese, yet everyone who made it said it was the gummiest, lousiest M&C they'd every tried? It was easy to make, but it skipped the cheese sauce steps and just mixed in shredded cheese.) I probably don't need to tell you that your traditional roux is butter and flour cooked in a sauce pan, then to get from the roux to the cheese sauce, you'd first blend in milk or cream (and maybe egg yolks) then add in the cheese. Even a chocolate souffle would follow similar instructions using flour to make a chocolate sauce.

This recipe seems to lack flour as an ingredient, so not only are you missing steps, I think you're missing ingredients.

It ended up vaguely cake like. I think the only step I missed was beating the egg whites and mixing them in. So it wasn't awful, just a bit flatter than perhaps intended. I'm pretty sure there was no flour left out. In any case, it was a recipe my husband pulled from a Spanish tourism guide of recipes to go with various Sherries (Jerez). The sherry selected did go with it, but I didn't prefer the taste. It was unusual. Some people loved it, some people didn't like it as much.