September 27, 2026

Misc. Weekend Eats

Had a little time at home this weekend, and some guests staying over so I decided I’d try out a few recipes while we were here. Since Clotted Cream takes about 24 hours, I started there. I was able to find some non-ultra-pasteurized heavy cream at Whole Foods, so I started there by pouring a pint of it into a coffee filter fitted over a strainer, which was over a bowl.

From there, I scraped/stirred it every 2 hours for the next 10 hours. Meanwhile, while we were waiting for guests to arrive I started on the Cheese Souffle by gathering up my ingredients.

Of course souffles are notoriously scary to make, so I took my time as went slowly and carefully. The first step was to make the cheese sauce.

The sauce came together well. I used a GF measure-for-measure flour for the roux, which worked fine, though I think the roux was a bit darker than it should have been. Though, cooking the water out of the butter is a bit tricky to time right – by the time I thought it had all been cooked out (the bubbles stopped being large and frequent) I think the butter started to brown. So that’s why in some of the following photos you’ll see the cheese sauce looking dark (though no less delicious). When the cheese sauce was done and it was cooling to room temperature, I started on the eggs whites. In the show, he added a tablespoon of water, which was not in the online recipe. I used the extra water, though not sure if it made a difference. I then beat the egg whites to medium peaks.

I thought I did a pretty good job with that, not knowing what to expect and how long to do beat them for. Then it was time to fold the foam into the cheese sauce.

You can see above how the cheese sauce was a bit dark. Maybe next time using white cheddar rather than yellow would lighten it a bit? Not sure, but I don’t think the color affected the final flavor. Folding in the foam was another place that was scary because I didn’t want to break the foam down and lose all the air I had put into the eggs from beating them. But, it actually turned out fine – again, just going slowly and carefully was the name of the game. After folding all the foam in, it was into the pan and into the oven.

Next came the cook, and here’s where I messed it up a bit. I put the souffle on the middle rack of the oven, not taking into account the enormous rise that I’d get while it cooked. So, what ended up happening was that it rose right into and through the top rack of the oven.

I had to kind of scrape it out of there, which was too bad because I feel like the top would have been absolutely perfect. As it was, though, even with an ugly and half-missing top, the souffle was superb. All of our guests had a good laugh at the oven mistake while we chowed down on it.

The next morning, it was time to take the clotted cream out of the fridge.

It seemed like all the liquid was drained, so I scraped what remained off the coffee filter and into another bowl.

From there I mixed small amounts of the liquid into the bowl until it was the consistency of cold cream cheese. Meanwhile, Gemma baked some blueberry scones, and when those were done we tried the cream on them. It was delightful – kind of like a cross between whipped cream and butter. Our guests enjoyed it too.

Side note. I spent a bunch of time reading around and discovered that this clotted cream recipe is not actually clotted cream. It’s closer to butter, but not really that, even, because it’s not churned. This recipe is really just isolated cream fat, which is really good by itself, but not clotted cream as it traditionally exists. I did notice that Alton has an updated recipe on his web site, and I did try that one first, though it didn’t work for me – I think my little 2 quart crock pot’s “warm” setting is not warm enough, because I got only the thinnest little layer of solids at the top after 10 hours.

Cheese Souffle

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used a yellow, mild cheddar. Maybe next time would try a white cheddar.
• Might use half the dry mustard next time.
• Added a tablespoon of water to the egg whites, like on the show (not mentioned in the online recipe)

Clotted Cream

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 4/5
• Tried Alton’s updated clotted cream recipe at first, which didn’t work so well
• This is not traditional clotted cream – it’s more like butter, which is still good though