Apple & Cheese Soufflés

Hi! Yep, I am back from Bangkok and managed to whip something up specially for you guys :)
I know some of you are like, "apple and cheese go together???" but hey, no harm trying right!
On a serious note, I had my reservations about posting this up because honestly this dish did not really go as well as I would have liked it to be, but as Nat said, this is a 'learning experience' because c'mon, baking isn't going to be a smooth-sailing ride where every recipe you try out turns out great. So I'm just going to put it out there - this was my first attempt at baking a soufflé, and while I'm glad it actually rose (more on that later), the taste just didn't hit the mark for me haha maybe it was the type of cheese I used or maybe cheese soufflés are just not my thing! But it could be yours!
This can function as an appetizer or a warm (albeit savoury) dessert :) the recipe can be found here!

The recipe stated to use this specific brand of sharp cheddar which sounds pretty "up there" but me being me, I just grabbed a relatively inexpensive block of sharp cheddar off the shelves at Fairprice hahaha. The cheese in the given recipe was white while mine was orange, so yeah I guess you should experiment with the different types of cheeses to see which one floats your boat :) As for the apples, I used Granny Smiths because they seem to be the favourites when it comes to apple-related desserts no?

This recipe involved a lot of cooking-on-the-stove, so yeah everything was going fine up to the caramelization of apples, then I had to prep the so-called base of the batter and I think I became quite frantic because I was like trying to manage the stove and watch the video recipe at the same time so yeah hahaha might have made a couple of mistakes then....
Then it came to the meringue, which is basically whipping the egg whites to soft peaks. That means when you make peaks in your meringue with your whisk, the peaks are supposed to fall. I think I might have overwhipped mine a little because it was like borderline stiff peaks but I still folded them in anyway and hoped for the best!

 As usual, the 'Before'....

 .....and the 'After'! (excuse the not-so-presentable ramekin) They deflate pretty quickly after taking them out

IT ACTUALLY ROSE, so yes it definitely looks like a soufflé, but not happy with the taste. And mine doesn't look like the one in the recipe either............whoops. Maybe it's the seasoning or the cheese, but anyway I'm still glad I gave it a go. If savoury desserts aren't your thing, go ahead and try a classic chocolate soufflé. I think it's much more....standard? Because it's easier to know if yours is cooked properly or not. And if you avidly watch Masterchef, chocolate soufflés are like in every season c/o Gordon Ramsay. This type of soufflé is less conventional so I wasn't sure whether mine was done right or not haha because I haven't tried one before.
Experimentation is pretty interesting, but I think I'm going to go back to my lemon roots next hahaha if you know me, you know that I'm a sucker for lemon desserts. So till next time and thanks so much for reading!!
Feel free to tell us what you want us to make for you! x

Nic