Wild Rice-Cranberry Soup

Happy Thursday everyone!

This past week has been a little busier than normal and I had no interest in blogging. I didn’t even open my laptop from Wednesday (of last week) through Monday afternoon.  I had a ridiculously long eye doctor appointment on Thursday. Friday morning was spent relaxing on the shores of Lake Michigan, followed by a trip to Chicago for some museum visiting and little bit of shopping, followed by more shopping on Saturday. I planned on driving back to MI on Sunday, but put it off because of some bad weather that never showed up (Thanks for the Weather Channel).

I finally got home Monday afternoon and haven’t done a whole lot since then. I made one of my favorite soups (recipe below), did a little bit of cleaning, did a lot of cursing at Jillian Michaels, and locked myself out of the house (thank goodness for neighbors with spare keys).

So, now that you know where I’ve been all week, I thought I would share this soup recipe. I know most people don’t eat soup when it is still fairly hot outside, but I’ve mentioned before that I’m not really big on seasonal eating. Soup in the Summer, popsicles in the Winter, whatever floats your boat. It isn’t the tastiest looking soup (it is actually kind of a really ugly color), but it is so good!

Wild Rice-Cranberry Soup

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 carrot, finely chopped

1 celery stalk, finely chopped

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 cups vegetable stock

1.5 cups cooked wild rice*

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 cup milk or half-and-half

2 tablespoons dry sherry (optional)

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

*To cook wild rice: Bring 2 cups water, 1/2 cup rinsed wild rice, and 1/2 teaspoon salt to a boil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat ; cover and simmer for 45-55 minutes. Drain well.

1. Melt the butter in a dutch oven (I don't have a dutch oven, so I just melted mine in a deep pot) over medium heat. 
2. Add carrot, celery and onion, stirring occasionally, until carrot is tender. About 8 minutes. (I recommend adding the onion about half way through otherwise it tends to burn)
3. Add the flour and stir until smooth.
4. Gradually add the vegetable stock and stir until soup is thickened, about 5 minutes.
5. Stir in the rice and cranberries.
6. Reduce heat; cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries are softened and plumped, about 15 minutes.
7. Stir in all the remaining ingredients and stir occasionally until warmed through.

This soup will keep for 3 days in the fridge. It will get really chunky in the fridge, but it thins out again as soon as your heat it up. If you want it thinner just add a little more milk when you are reheating it.

Recipe taken & slightly adapted from "A Beautiful Bowl of Soup" by Paulette Mitchell

(That's the soup on the cover!)

If you make it, I'd love to know what you think of it!

xoxo

Cotton Candy Buttercream Frosting

My sister, Emily, and her husband, Craig, decided to take a trip to my mom's house this week. So, I took that as an opportunity to take a mini-vacation to Mom's as well. Whenever we are together we usually end up spending every second baking or shopping. Today we experimented with a few new recipes that we found online, and this frosting was my favorite. I found it on Creative Hostess a few days ago.

The frosting only takes a few ingredients. The cotton candy was harder to find than we expected. We ended up finding this kind at Blockbuster, and it worked out really well.

We didn't want to spend a lot of time making cupcakes from scratch, so we just used Funfetti mix instead.

Then we started on the icing. Be careful with this part. We accidentally added all the Confectioners' sugar at once, but it worked out fine.

The recipe says to use red food coloring, but we didn't think that would look right with the pink cotton candy, so Em mixed three drops of neon purple coloring with one drop of neon turquoise coloring, which worked out perfectly.

Then we added in the cotton candy.

All the cupcakes that Em decorated look great. The ones that I did, however, look like someone just randomly dumped some icing on them. Oh well, it's the taste the counts, right? Right.

Make sure not to put the cotton candy on top until you are serving the cupcakes. We went to eat these after they had been sitting out for a while and the cotton candy had completely wilted and turned into a little ball of blue and pink sugar. 

These cupcakes were amazing. They sound really sugary, but I promise you they really aren't that bad. They are definitely sweet, but not as super sweet as I expected them to be. They were the perfect treat to end a long week. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 Cup (2 Sticks) of butter
• 6 to 8 Cups confectioners' sugar (we used 7)
• 1/2 Cup milk
• 2 Teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 Handful cotton candy, plus more for the garnish (optional)
• Food Coloring

Directions

1. Place the butter in a large mixing bowl.
2. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the milk and vanilla.
3. Set your blender to medium and beat the mixture until smooth and creamy, about 3 to 5 minutes.
4. Gradually add the remaining sugar,1 cup at a time (this is where we messed up), beating well after each addition (about 2 minutes), until the icing is thick enough to to spread on your cupcakes. You may not need all the sugar.
5. Add a few drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly until it is reached the color you want. 
6. Stir in the small pieces of cotton candy, stirring until incorporated. 
7. Use and store the icing at room temperature. It will set if chilled.
8. Optional: Tear off chicks of cotton candy and use as a garnish. Again, don't do this until you are ready to serve the cupcakes. 

Reese's Cup Brownies

I started off the day with a quick trip to the monthly market place in town. After seeing all the delicious food that was for sale everywhere I turned, I decided to whip up these super easy and extremely delicious brownies. I saw the recipe in an issue of Cosmopolitan about two years ago, and whenever I need to make a quick and simple dessert, this is usually the one I turn to. I thought I would share the recipe since it would be a perfect summertime treat with a bit of vanilla ice cream on top. There are only a few ingredients, which make this easy enough for anyone to make. I used applesauce instead of eggs, since It is hard to find Ener-G Egg replacer here. I usually use my grandma’s brownie recipe, but today I didn’t feel like spending time making brownies from scratch so I used a box of Duncan Hines Chewy Fudge Brownie mix instead.

Ingredients

                         

Combine brownie mix, egg or egg substitute, water, and oil in a bowl and stir until smooth.

Stir until smooth.

                         

After coating your pan with some non-stick spray, pour a thin layer of the brownie mix into the pan. Please ignore how gross this pan looks. It is clean, I promise, it is just really old. We are remodeling our kitchen so there isn't too many options available right now since everything is boxed up.

Cover with Reese’s cups. I used a 9x9 pan, and the bag of snack size Reese’s has 14 cups in it. As you can see, 14 cups wasn’t quite enough, but it works out fine once cooked. However, if you use anything bigger than a 9x9 pan, I would recommend getting two bags of Reese’s.

Pour the rest of the brownie mix on top of the Reese’s and smooth it out.

Cook according to the instruction on the box, or your recipe if you make your brownies from scratch. If you use applesauce instead of eggs, cook for a few minutes less than the box recommends.

Enjoy!