Orange Cauliflower and Butternut Squash Soup

One of my most favorite blogs to read is Cannelle et Vanille.  The pictures are so inspiring and so are the unusual flavor combinations.  As someone who can eat wheat products, I don't make a lot of the gluten-free recipes on the site even though they sound amazing.  I did come across this Orange Cauliflower and Butternut Squash Soup recipe, posted on another site where she did an interview, and I was intrigued.  I didn't think I would ever see orange cauliflower, but one appeared to me at the market in a bin full of its white friends.  (Later, at the other market I go to, I saw a giant bright purple one too!  What a day.)  So I got it and made this soup a few days later.

Some things about the recipe are a little odd, so you kind of have to go with your instincts.  There are no measurements given for the cauliflower or butternut squash besides "one" and maybe a loose descriptor like "small" or "large," yet the recipe calls for 2 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of black pepper.  As I put the pepper in the pot I thought to myself, hmm, this seems like a lot of pepper.  Then I dumped it in.  Then I thought, "maybe I'll use a little less salt and add more later on."  So I used 1 tsp of salt.  I did add more later, but I strongly doubt it came out to a full teaspoon.  The black pepper ended up providing a noticeable kick, in a very good way.  The soup seemed fairly basic from the recipe, so I used a bouillon cube with herbs instead of just a regular one.

The recipe made about 2.5 quarts, a little more than the other soup recipes I have been making.  I suspect this may have been in part because of the giant head of cauliflower I used.  You could definitely make this with white cauliflower, but the orange complements the color of the butternut squash, so you won't get quite as orange a soup.  We ate these with Panetini crackers/toasts left over from the summer bruschetta, but the recipe recommends parmesan and herb crackers which sound delicious as well.  This was Ken's favorite soup so far, so I suspect I will be making more of it later this winter.

Apple Butter Muscovado Cake

I've been trying to use up things in my pantry.  This is going well, but also not.  I tend to replace at a faster rate than I use (unintentionally).  I finished off two different size containers of chicken broth and a jar of apple butter, but I also bought chickpeas, red lentils, yellow split peas, popcorn kernels, french lentils, and pearl couscous.  So space-wise, I'm not doing too well.  But hey, I'm trying.

I was flipping through Super Natural Cooking and I saw a recipe for Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake.  I glanced at a little box off to the side where Heidi suggested using other curd flavors (curd is also known as fruit butter) for different seasons and I immediately remembered that I had a small jar of apple butter from last summer that needed to be used.  Of course, I didn't need to bring a cake anywhere... but I decided to make it anyway.

This is a HEAVY cake.  It's full of butter and sugar.  Personally, I think the butter could be cut down with little consequence, but I'd have to try it out.  The top was nice and crusty the first day but softened up in the refrigerator.  I replaced half the sugar with muscovado sugar, partly because I just got 10 pounds of it in the mail, but mostly because I love the flavor and thought it would do well in a cake like this.  As I also mentioned, you could do any different type of fruit butter and it would be delicious.

One major problem I had was with the technique.  You're supposed to spread the apple butter in the middle of the cake, putting the second half of the batter on top.  This pretty much ruined my cake structurally - the top part came out of the pan while the bottom part did not.  (Fortunately, I was going for taste over presentation.)  You also swirl some on top of the cake.  What I would recommend in the future is putting ALL the apple butter on top of the cake, a bit at a time, and pushing it downward with a butter knife.  I would drag the knife longways, since you will cut slices crossways.  The bit of apple butter I swirled on top of the cake was enveloped by the batter anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about hiding the fruit butter.

I may try to make this again, but I want to try cutting down the butter!  A version with citrus curd might be next on the list.

 

Oops...

Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Toasts

My friend Hilary came over last Saturday afternoon to make Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Toasts.  We love winter squash and a discussion with her is what somehow made me start making soup all of a sudden.  The Gruyere "croutons" (we decided that they are really toasts) made this soup extra special.

This soup stood out to me a bit over some of the others I've been making.  One reason was the use of both butternut AND acorn squash - the acorn seemed to mute the excessive sweetness that butternut can have.  I thought the combination created an outstanding flavor.  This soup was also a bit thinner than the other soups I've made with squash - just a tiny bit thinner, but noticeably so, and somehow this made a big textural difference to me.  I finished the bowl pretty easily (with thicker soups I sometimes have to force myself through the texture, even if I'm still hungry).  The sage and thyme were perfect flavors for the soup and for the season, and carrying them over into the amazing little toasts tied it all together.  I LOVE Gruyere, so this might have been my favorite part, even more than the soup, but just a little.

This is a soup that I hope to come back to again!  Luckily I was able to stash a bit in the freezer, labeled with specific instructions to serve with Gruyere toasts.