I can't believe I made this!

Considering I started baking in ernest about a month ago, not even I would have believed that I could pull off a fancy looking pumpkin soufflé. But when my November Gourmet magazine came, I saw these, and I thought, why not? The ingredient list seemed doable, and the process didn't seem too intense. My friend was coming over with her new boyfriend, so I thought I would make a good first impression. A good, fluffy, powder sugar impression.

I followed the recipe exactly, having zero confidence in my ability to experiment with soufflé. The only thing I did different was I didn't use canned pumpkin. I was making pumpkin soup the night before (I'm still perfecting, stay tuned), and I had too much pumpkin so I made my own puree by cutting the sweet pumpkin in half, deseeding, scraping out the inside, peeling the skin with a paring knife and cutting in cubes. Then I boiled the pumpkin cubes until soft, drained, and threw the cubes in the blender. (This was not nearly as hard as I had imagined it by the way. When my friend told me he made a pumpkin pie this way I thought he had lost his mind.)

The good news: I discovered I can competently make a soufflé and have it turn out quite pretty. The bad news: I think I discovered I don't particularly like soufflé, or at least not pumpkin soufflé. If anything can possibly taste too light and fluffy this does. It tasted like eating pumpkin pie air, if that makes any sense. But if that's your type of thing, you'll probably love this. Myself, I'll be trying for chocolate soufflé next time.