A Selection of Soups

Did I ever mention we don't like to take the easy route?  So last Saturday when we decided we wanted to make a selection of soups we didn't just choose 1 or 2 kinds to make.  We planned to make 5 soups and 1 crockpot meaty taco soup but ended up with 7 kinds in total!

We rarely get to eat dinner before 8.30pm and often it is gone 9pm by the time we're home settled and food is prepared.  Pretty late considering there are evenings where I'm falling asleep by 10pm!  So after teaching we get home, eat and sleep!  There must be a better way!  So we thought by preparing a TONNE of soups we would have lots of frozen easy to prepare soups in a short amount of time = easy dinner!  If we remembered we could take them out in the morning, if not we could do a quick defrost in boiling water.

Here are the kinds of soup we made and some photos of the day's work!

Oh, and where I'M from - tea can be called dinner!  Hence the category of this blog post!

1.  Taco Soup Crockpot - thank you Pinterest for helping me find this and especially to Crockpot365 for this YUMMY recipe.  Find it here!

Super easy to make, firstly to brown the meat - then just dumping a load of cans into the crockpot!

This was so filling and so good!  With so many beans to chew into and then the texture and flavour of the meat and the slightly spicy taco flavouring it was really good.  We ate this for about a week - and could have gone on and on and on!  We'll be making this again FOR SURE!

2.  Vanaema's Harvest Vegetable Soup - a quick phone call to get a list of ingredients and we were ready to try out Jonathan's grandmother's famous soup!  We're excited she shared her recipe with us but can't claim that ours was better than hers!

3.  Grandma's Creamy Carrot and Parsnip Soup - My Grandma's turn this time!  A really sweet soup with the carrot and parsnip but really thick and very tasty!

4.  Sweet Potato and Molasses Soup - Thank you Rose Reisman for this soup!  And it's a healthy one too!!  We loved the flavour of this soup - the molasses really brings a different taste to the soup and I LOVE sweet potatoes so what a great combination!

5.  Tomato and Basil Soup - a nice simple one with lots and lots of tomatoes (BOO on having to peel them all however!) and some fresh basil from our herb garden, yey!

6.  Leek and Potato Soup - another easy one to make one of our favourite soups.  I believe we used this recipe from BBC's Good Food, just a simple one using basic ingredients!  

7.  Butternut Squash and Roasted Garlic Soup - For one last soup, we had a lot of butternut squash leftover as they are SO big!  So we roasted it up with some fresh herbs and also some garlic. Whizz them up and there you have an easy extra soup with leftover veg!

*** Careful while peeling the butternut squash - Jonathan ended up with lots of little prickles but also orange fingers and hands for over a week!! ***

We cooled all of our soups down for the rest of the day and the evening was spent carefully ladling the soups into smaller ziploc portions.  We made room in our freezer to firstly lay them flat until completely frozen (some took way longer than others to freeze!) and then when they could stand up we gained some space back in the freezer as they fit nicely stacked or in the freezer door.  

I wrote the instructions for cooking, or how much cream or milk to add, or any extra seasoning required when heated up on 1 of each type and referred to that one each time we cooked a soup.

An important thing:  We did not add any cream or milk to these recipes as we weren't sure how well that would freeze and thaw.  We added milk usually to the soups, unless we had cream in from something else so save that for another day!

We ended up with a good 60 portions of soup so we're definitely ready for the Winter months of late evening piano teaching finishes now :-)

Summer Piano Olympics ♫

What better way to celebrate London 2012 than by running my own Summer Piano Olympics for my summer students!  As well as working on our usual pieces of work they would each get a Summer Olympic pack with colouring pages and an Olympic notebook to start.

For each good thing they did over the Summer, some good practice, completed great homework or something else musically exceptional they got a star to stick on the runner page... of course understanding that there would be a prize at the end... just like any good Olympic competition!

A few of my favourite pages, including one that really got me laughing!!

After a really fun Summer of learning National Anthems from countries my students had a connection to, or had visited on vacation... really fun Summer homework activities and worksheets *** Many thanks to Susan Paradis' amazing website for these *** ...and lots of hard work and fun my students all got their prize!

A personal certificate, a music medal (necklace!) and a vanilla cupcake with Oreo butter cream for every lucky student!

Congratulations to all my students - well done for working so hard - I'm always so proud of you! ♫

Summertime Citrus Cake

♫ Summer time, and the living is easy ♫... And it definitely is when your weekend can be spent by the lake soaking in the sun at the cottage and enjoying the warm water!  2012 Birthday Bash was the perfect opportunity for me to try a citrus cake I had been thinking about.  Mmmm citrus!

Sponge cake with a hint of lemon, a citrus butter cream frosting and as you can see, slices of lemons, limes and oranges and a few pieces of fresh mint for decoration.

And here's the recipe! (and yes, I'm finally adding it like a year since I made it :-D... better late than never?!)

I have had this recipe saved for a long time, I believe some parts of it were found online but sadly I don't know where from originally (this was before the Pinterest days) but parts of it were altered as to how I did it too, so try it out - it is so yummy!  So thank you to the person who first inspired me to make this :-)

Citrus Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter

2 1.2 cups all-purpose flour

Grated zest of 2 oranges and 2 lemons

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1.5 cups sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 large eggs

1 cup whole milk

Blood oranges, oranges, lemons, limes sliced for decoration on top of the cake.  Fresh mint to arrange around fruit.

Method:

1.  Heat oven to 350°F.  Grease 2 8",9" or 10" round cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper. Grease again and also dust with flour, tapping out the excess.

2.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

3.  Using a mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium-high until fluffy.  Mix in the grated zests of the oranges and lemons.  Add vanilla and then the eggs one at a time.

4.  Add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the milk.  Use mixer on low speed.  Mix together until just combined.

5.  Divide the batter between the cake pans and level it out before baking.  Bake until a skewer (or toothpick) comes out clean.  Between 20-30 minutes depending on your pan size.

6.  Cool the cakes for 15 minutes in the pan before turning out onto cooling racks to cool completely.

Lemon Curd Filling

Ingredients:
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Method:
1.  In a heatproof bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, juice and salt.  Add the butter.
2.  Set the bow over a saucepan of simmering water and cook, whisking constantly until the mixture has thickened - 12 to 15 minutes.
3.  Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl.  Place a piece of parchment paper right on top of the surface of the lemon curd and refrigerate until completely cool.  At least 2 hours.

Citrus Buttercream

Ingredients:
2 cups unsalted butter
2 tablespoons lemon zest
2 tabslespoons fresh orange juice
3 3/4 cups sifted icing sugar
Pinch of salt

Method
1.  Beat the butter and lemon zest on high until light and fluffy.
2.  Add the orange juice.
3.  With the mixture on low, gradually add the sugar, then the salt and beat unti smooth.

Ice the cake and decorate, and enjoy :-)

A Very British Summer - Olympic Party!

Eeekkkk London 2012 is here!  It's the Opening Ceremony night and everything at our place is British.  We had a few friends over to watch the first night, to support England, Canada and Estonia!  I made some British bunting, we made some select English foods and got settled down to watch!

Savoury to start:  Chicken and Mushroom Pies.  Party sized made in a muffin tray.

Baked scotch eggs!  One of our favourite snacks, this time created in our very own kitchen!  Yum!  And this wont be the only time.

Yorkshire Puddings with Roast Beef

The full spread of British snacks!

 Although rather full we did still manage some Mini Victoria Sponge Cakes and Party Rings!

My favourite kind of cake to make.... and eat.

    Enjoy a British Summer celebrating the Jubilee year and London 2012.

MA Brains!

Jonathan just completed his Masters in Psychology - thesis submitted and passed he is now the proud owner of his BSc and 2 MAs!  So proud of him for finishing up on his latest studies!  ... Now just the PhD to go!!

As a lot of his research and coursework was on brain stuff I made cupcake BRAINS!  I guess I will tag these as Halloween cakes as most people might enjoy making these for that time of year but I thought it was appropriate for his end of school year congrats!

I used a vanilla sponge cake recipe and piped the brains on with butter cream.  It was VERY hot both outside and also inside our place that day, so some of the piping was a little squishy but most were okay.

And the main thing is, Jonathan liked them (and could tell what they were!)...  He also likes when the baking is all for him, so there we go - success on both counts!

Ryerson colours to say Congratulations Jonathan!! ♥

A Taste of Britain: Cherry Bakewell Tray Bake

I love the chance to bake something new so last Sunday it was a post-church coffee and lunch afternoon so I made sure to dig out some recipes I had been wanting to try for a while.  I knew I wanted to do a tray bake as this would make enough to be a significant contribution to the sweet table and would be easiest to do.  Initially seeing as I work on Saturday I was looking for an easy recipe that wouldn't take too long, but oh well - that didn't happen but I LOVE how it all turned out and although the recipe had many stages it didn't take too long!  I was between two different recipes but that day the Cherry Bakewell won!  (Orange and Marzipan Tray Bake to come another day, another blog post...)

Cherries and Almonds.  Pastry and icing.  Strawberry jam and Cake.  This tray bake has some pretty awesome combinations!

I found the recipe here but instead of buying ready made sweet shortcrust pastry I made it!  Busy time is best time remember!!  Just a simple pastry recipe before going ahead with the rest of the recipe.

Here's how it looked post-oven but pre-slice!  

I kept it like this overnight to keep it fresh and sliced it into small squares (it made 35 in total) Sunday morning before taking most of it to church!  We may have had a square or two for breakfast as well!

What I love about Cherry Bakewell are the combination of the outer pastry edge, the bottom jam layer with spongey almond cake topped off with icing, cherries and almonds.  So yes, I love all of it!  This will be made many MANY more times!  I highly recommend you to try it :-)

And here is the first of my 'A Taste of Britain' blogging series - for all my British baking - keep an eye out for more British inspired bakes and makes coming soon!

Good Friday Good Dessert

Easter weekend off work so we invited Jonathan's family over for lunch after church on Good Friday morning.  We prepared steak on the BBQ with the compound butters (check out this post), potato salad and our project dessert - the frozen lemon mousse.  Something we hadn't tried before but wanted to make!

It had a few different parts to it - candying the lemon rind, such a cool and yummy way to prepare this and very good for decoration!  Lemon curd to make, strain and chill.  And then of course the cream part of the dessert to mix with the curd, all before putting them in the freezer in their molds. While they were freezing there was also a lemon sauce to make!  And for something extra we melted some chocolate and made some swirls and other decoration that we also froze ready for when we plated the dessert.

Lemon Curd in preparation

Candying the lemon rind, yummy! 

A long time ago I found a great shaped silicone mold tray but had never used it... But now here was my chance!  We did 4 in the molds, and then a few extra desserts in ring molds.

Here's how it ended up:

5 around our little table, nice and snug for a family meal!

Frozen Lemon Mousse
with dark chocolate swirl and raspberries.

Thank you Martha Stewart for this recipe.  We loved trying it out - both making and eating!! :-)

Easter Bakes and Makes

This Easter meant lots of family get togethers which for me means the opportunity to make and to bake as much as I can!  Just like my 'About Me' says, freedom is boredom so busy time is the best time - and I made the most of my Easter days off work!

First stop was Easter cards.  Just a little simple design using our scalloped circle punch from our wedding (it has been well used since!) and some printables I found of course, on Pinterest!

Next stop more scalloped punches... A quick and easy bit of bunting using paint strips (thank you Walmart hehe), the punch and some cute yellow ribbon.

Then come the Easter treats!  A big bunny cutter and my tiny little farm animal cookie cutters led to these sugar cookie goodie bags iced and decorated for an Easter treat for everybody.

After seeing this on Pinterest from Sweet Vanilla Bean I HAD to try it!  Chocolate dipped peeps, so cool! Super fun easy make anybody could do (even Jonathan joined me for this!)... just melt some chocolate and coloured wafers dip and go!  Just be prepared for a sweet SWEET day of eating!

Although I have some more Easter baking and making to post about I think that's all the Easter treats that will make it onto this post!

Here are the finished products: