Cheesy Vegetable Beer Soup

Nothing like a good ol cuppa soup to warm your buns for these chilly nights, huh?  This vegetable soup went creamy, as part of my soft foods diet after getting my wisdom teeth ripped out a couple of weeks ago.  I had a hankering for broccoli cheese soup, but didn't quite have enough broccoli.  I decided to clean out the veggie drawer and whip this up.

The veggies are cooked in a normal fashion to make soup.  But the magic happens when beer and cheese combine.  I used a hoppy ale, but use whatever you'd like.  Not into beer?  Then the soup will not be what it is supposed to be. . .BEER cheese soup.  Go find another recipe or replace with stock & milk.

Pair it up with homemade bread, and you'll be a TRUE hippie.

Cheesy Vegetable Beer Soup

• 1 1/2 Tbs Butter
• 2 Cups Broccoli florets and stems, chopped
• 1 large zucchini, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 medium carrots, scrubbed and chopped
• 1 1/2 lbs mixed sweet and white baby potatoes
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 tsp ea: dried thyme & salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 6 cups water
• 1 1/2 Tbs Better than Bouillon Vegetarian Vegetable Flavor
• 2 C baby spinach
•  2 Tbs Butter
• 1/4 C flour (white or whole wheat is fine)
• 1 Beer
• 1-2 Tbs mustard, to your liking
• 2 cups shredded cheese (I used a mixture of what I had on hand.  Important thing is to include plenty of sharp cheese)
• 1/3 C Heavy cream (*optional)

1. Saute vegetables (except spinach) in 1 1/2 Tbs butter for 5-10 minutes, or until slightly softened.  Add water, seasoning, & bouillon, and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until veggies are tender.  Add the spinach and cover the pot.  Take off the heat and allow to cool while you prepare the cheese sauce.
2. In a separate pot, melt 2 Tbs butter.  Stir in the flour and cook for about 2 minutes.  Add the mustard, then slowly add the beer, whisking it in.  Allow to cook for about 4-5 minutes over medium heat, until thick and bubbly.  Take off the heat, and fold in the cheese and stir until smooth.  Set aside.
3. Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until smooth.  You can also do this in a blender in batches, but I think that just leaves more dishes to do and is a pain in the ass.  Go get a fricken immersion blender!  You'll get this cute little chopper cup that is PERFECT for garlic and herbs with it, too!
4. Using a whisk, slowly incorporate the cheese sauce mixture into the soup.  Add cream and serve.

Adventures in Cake Decorating

This past weekend, we enjoyed celebrating our son's 2nd birthday with friends and family.  Basically, an excuse to put my culinary curiosities into motion! Read: eat chocolate.

I googled cake recipes, searching for a sheet cake recipe, as I had planned on a Train theme cake.  The sheet cake would be the ground.

King Arthur Flour is a staple brand in my flour consumption.  I found this recipe and was really happy with it.  A beautiful crumb, substantial, yet light and rich at the same time.

I really don't like sticky sweet frostings.  Most of the store bought ones make me want to gag.  The frosting I made was so freaking good you may start dreaming about it after it's eaten.  My sister-in-law claimed she'd like to throw her head into an entire bowl and live there.  Or something like that.  Get my point? It's that good.

German Buttercream Frosting

adapted from Bravetart

• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 vanilla pods
• 12 oz. sugar
• 1 1/2 oz. corn starch
• 2 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 4 sticks butter (1 lb), softened
• 1/4 tsp salt, or to taste

1. Prepare a pudding.  Split the vanilla beans, and drop into milk.  Bring to a simmer.  Allow to steep for about 10 minutes.  Remove pods, then scrape the insides out and put them back into the milk.  Put the milk back on to a simmer.  
2. Stir together sugar, corn starch, egg yolks & eggs.  Whisk in about half of the simmering milk, stirring rapidly with a wire whisk the entire time.  Add the tempered egg mixture to the pan and bring to a boil.  Stirring the ENTIRE time.  Once the mixture is bubbling, cook for one minute.  Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.
3. Place pudding into a mixing bowl and mix on medium until cooled to room temperature.  You can also chill in the refrigerator with some plastic wrap pressed firmly on the surface of the pudding.
4. Once the pudding has COMPLETELY chilled, put it back into your stand-up mixer.  Crank that baby up and let it get creamy.  Now here comes the magical part.  Start throwing in that butter.  Tablespoon by tablespoon, drop into the running mixture, allowing it to incorporate after each addition.  It will get more and more fluffy as it mixes.  Don't over mix or it will get dry looking.
5. Mix in 12 oz melted dark or milk chocolate for a decadent and beautifully shiny chocolate frosting or tint with coloring or flavoring.  I divided mine in about half and used about 6 oz of bittersweet chocolate, melted in the microwave, then stirred carefully into the remaining frosting.

My cake decorating skills obviously suck, but I really don't care.  What I care about most is a cake that tastes good.  Fondant has always grossed the shit out of me.  I don't care how pretty the damn thing is.  If it tastes like plastic, it is a failure, IMO.  

So, this cake?  It's supposed to be a train.

I used colored sugar sprinkles and natural food dye from Chocolate Candy Kits.  The colors don't turn out nearly as bright as conventional food dyes, but I made it work.  I was going for a red for the front train car, but it was only going to a darker pink.  A little bit of yellow and voila! Orange-ish. . .  

The sprinkles were yummy! Reminded me of the cookie filling in those ice cream cakes we'd get when we were kids from Carvel.

I also made this banner out of scraps and pieces from my stash.  So everyone could enjoy it on his or her birthday, I made it multi-colored.  I like to keep my scraps of fusible interfacing fabrics in zippered plastic bags by color.  I have all of these in a large plastic bin.  It makes it really easy to be able to grab a scrap of, say, yellow, and cut a moon quickly to add to an applique scene.

Each flag is backed by matching fabrics.  I simply strait-stitched the letters on and serged the edges in colorful threads.

My boy had a blast with everyone.  Ripping thru wrapping paper like an old pro.  Afterwards was just as fun, blowing up balloons and investigating coolers.

Sweet Heat

I'm back on Blogger!  My laptop is pretty much done with.  I got a new camera a few months ago and took tons of beautiful pictures.  I'm pretty good about saving my pictures religiously to my computer and getting them off my camera's memory card.  Well, a sorry-ass computer is NOT cool for keeping those pictures on!  I quickly filled it's capacity with RAW files over and over and over again!  I decided to go to an online backup saving system, and chose Carbonite.  It backs up all the files you want so you can restore your computer or access them when you're away from home.

Here we are, almost 3 months later, and Carbonite is finished uploading!  Yes, it took over 2 months to backup my 60 gigs of crap from my old computer.

Not sure if I mentioned or not before, but this past Summer began my debut of home canning.  At a local farmers market shop, I saw a beautiful display of blackberries, at their peak, and swarming with fruit flies. "Eat Me!" came to mind, and so did "Jam me, baby!"  Two for one on sale, I picked up several baskets, along with some fragrant peaches and colorful tomatoes.

And so it began.

I bought the Ball Canning book, one of the best things ever created for people who thought canning was a thing of the past, or something that you'd have to slave over.   Sure, it isn't something that you can whip up in a few minutes, but, as with most things in life, it takes time and patience and you'll be rewarded ten fold.

I began with a couple of standard jams, and moved onto a few sauces.  My absolute favorite item so far is the Tomato Jam, from the Food in Jars website.  Sweet and spicy, this jam gets slathered onto cream-cheese'd homemade bread, crackers or bagels, as a spread for veggie burgers, and mixed with mayo and balsamic for a mock-thousand island dressing in my Seitan Rueben Sandwiches, and so much more.  It's first bite is creamy sweetness, then a bit of warmth surrounds your taste buds, leaving them yearning for another bite.

This used up some of my own tomatoes (even green ones!), in my late Summer garden, along with some beautiful heirlooms from the local farmers market.  In my second batch, I used up some not-so-good-looking tomatoes from another stand (which I question the "local-ness" of), and it was equally as good.  My second batch was kicked up with some garlic, onion powder and a bit of cumin.

You'll have a large pot filled with stuff, which you'll cook the shit out of.  Mine took me about 1 1/2-2 hours, but it might take less cooking time if you use more pastey tomatoes, like Romas.  I just used what I could find.

Click here for the recipe.

Hope to be back soon!  

Fun Fair Friday

Be sure and make it out to your local fair for an interesting time!

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Breaded Zucchini

Drop your zucchini "sticks" into seasoned flour, then seasoned beaten egg (with a bit of milk), then into a seasoned mixture of panko and italian breadcrumbs.

Fry at 350 for about 3-5 minutes, or until deep golden brown.

We used a yellow zucchini, bought at our local Farmer's Market.  Serve with your favorite (homemade, of course!) marinara as a side, or appetizer.  Tonight, we had meatball subs.