Creamy Butternut Squash Soup

There are so many recipes out there for butternut squash soup, but without a doubt my favourites are those that have a spicy curry flavour and a little chilli heat or those that also include some apple in them.

The first time that I tried butternut squash was many years ago when I first visited the United States, where it was served as a mashed vegetable accompaniment to roast turkey in the restaurant that I was working in. The thing that struck me when I ate it then, was how naturally sweet it was. It is because of this sweetness that butternut squash can take on other punchy flavours without its inherent personality being lost. As already mentioned, I love it paired with apple in a creamy soup, but I would strongly recommend using cooking apples or tart Granny Smith as you need a certain acidity to balance all the sweetness.

 

This is a great soup for this time of year. It’s creamy and comforting to eat but the inclusion of chilli and ginger adds a zingy warmth to the finished soup which enlivens the taste buds. I have only used half a chilli, but if you like it hot, add some more.

Roasting the butternut squash before adding it to the soup really intensifies the flavour, so I would advise you to do it, but if you are short on time you can chop the peeled butternut squash in medium sized chunks and simmer them in the stock.

I have used ground coriander and a few rasps of nutmeg and added these to the onions, garlic and ginger whilst they were softening in the pan. I definitely think that this spice combination added a little something extra to the soup.

 

This is a perfect soup for autumn and looks so cheery and inviting that it is sure to enliven even the most miserable day.
 

Ingredients:

To roast the butternut squash:
1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, cut into medium sized chunks

25ml olive oil

A sprig of thyme

½ thin red chilli, chopped finely

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Soup:

1tblsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

2tsp of fresh ginger, grated

½ tsp ground coriander

½ tsp ground nutmeg

500ml vegetable stock

250ml coconut milk from a can

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

To garnish (optional):

Some coriander leaves

Some thin slices of chilli cut across the centre

Toasted coconut flakes
 

Method:

Roasted butternut squash:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/Fan Oven 180C/Gas Mark 6. Tumble the butternut squash chunks into a roasting dish along with the thyme, chilli and olive oil. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the squash has softened and started to caramelise at the edges. Remove from oven.

Soup:

2. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a moderate heat. Add the onion, garlic, ginger, coriander and nutmeg and allow to cook for about 5 minutes without colouring or until the onions have softened and become translucent.

3. Add the roasted butternut squash, the vegetable stock and coconut milk and increase the temperature under the saucepan. Bring up to the boil and then immediate reduce heat so that everything just simmering away gently. Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes.

4. Purée the soup in a blender until smooth and then return to a clean saucepan and keep warm until ready to serve. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.

5. Garnish with some coriander, chilli and coconut flakes if desired. Serve hot with some crusty bread.
 

Serves 6.

 

 

1st Birthday and a recipe for Lemon Cupcakes with Limoncello Glacé Icing & a Lemon Curd Centre!

Tomorrow is my blog’s 1^st Birthday!!!

WOOHOO!!!

In the past year, I have loved sharing some of my favourite recipes and the memories that many of these dishes evoke for me. As the year progressed I found that I was becoming far more adventurous and experimental with some of the foods that I was cooking. The thing that has probably amazed me the most is that I don’t find it burdensome cooking, photographing and writing up the recipes and that it is in fact a process that I enjoy very much.

So on the eve of my blog’s birthday, I would like to thank all those who follow me, those who have commented on and those who have given me feedback about my recipes. I am truly grateful and extremely humbled whenever anyone takes time out of their busy lives to do so.

Given my celebratory mood, I wanted to bake something to mark the occasion, but was determined that it would be something special and representative of my favourite things. I didn’t have to think much about this. I love cake; I love lemon and I love daisies!!! You will see in the photos accompanying this post that I have decorated my cupcakes with individual sugar daisies that I had left over from another cake that I had baked for a christening. I think they look so beautiful delicately perched on top of these cupcakes.

 

In many ways this is a really simple cupcake… the sponge is light flavoured with finely grated lemon zest and it is topped with a simple glacé icing! I have embellished it a bit, by hollowing a little of the cooked sponge cake out of each cupcake and filling the cavity with homemade lemon curd and have also flavoured the glacé icing with the Italian lemon liqueur Limoncello - what I was trying to achieve was a really lemony cupcake and in this regard, I feel that I definitely achieved my aims.

 

What I particularly like about these cupcakes is that they are not decorated with a thick layer of buttercream icing but instead a rather restrained (but VERY flavoursome) glacé icing. I flavoured the icing with Limoncello, but if you don’t have any, just substitute some freshly squeezed lemon juice – the cupcakes will still taste fab.
 

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:
175g butter, softened

175g caster sugar

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

175g self-raising flour, sifted

Lemon Curd:

4 unwaxed lemons, juice and finely grated zest

200g caster sugar

100g butter, cut into small cubes

3 large eggs plus 1 yolk, lightly beaten

Glacé icing:

200g icing sugar

2-3tblsp Limoncello

To finish:

9 sugar daisies (optional)
 

Method:

Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Place 9 cupcake cases in a cupcake/muffin tin and set aside.

2. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy. Add the finely grated lemon zest and beat again to fully incorporate.

3. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add the sifted flour and fold into the creamed mixture. Once all the flour has been added and fully incorporated, spoon the mixture, dividing it equally, into the prepared baking cupcake cases.

4. Bake in the preheated oven for 17-20 minutes until the cupcakes are golden brown cooked through and well risen. Allow to cook for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

Lemon curd:

5. Place the lemon juice and zest, sugar and butter into a heatproof bowl. Place the bowl sitting over a pan of barely simmering water making sure that the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl.

6. Stir the mixture occasionally until the butter has melted. Add the eggs into the lemon mixture and whisk together until everything is well incorporated. Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring constantly until the mixture has thickened.

7. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool completely (NOTE: This makes more lemon curd than you need for this recipe, but any excess can be poured into sterilised jars and stored in the fridge for 2 or 3 weeks.

Glacé icing:

8. Mix everything together to create a thickish glacé icing (about the same consistency as golden syrup). Set aside.

To finish:

9. Using a small melon baller hollow out a small cavity from the centre of each cupcake. Fill this with a teaspoonful of lemon curd and then top with some of the glacé icing. Place a sugar daisy on top and allow the icing to set.

 

Makes 9.
 

 

 

 

Almond & Pistachio Cantucci

These are such great biscuits… and so incredibly easy to make.  These are biscuits in the true sense of the word, in that they are twice baked! The word ‘biscuit’ is derived from the French and prior to that the Latin for ‘twice-baked’ (bis = twice; coquere = cooked)… And these cantucci are baked twice, firstly in a loaf and then sliced into individual biscuits and dried out in the oven.

Cantucci are a type of Italian biscuit, often dipped into sweet wine at the end of a meal. Whilst I am not claiming that an Italian would declare my version to be absolutely authentic, I can assure you that the finished biscuits are delicious.

 

As regular readers of my posts will know, I am on a bit of a pistachio crusade at the moment, eagerly trying all manner of different recipes that use this fabulously tasty, almost sweet nut. Here I have used whole pistachios along with whole blanched almonds, but to be honest you could use only pistachios or whatever other nuts you would prefer.

 

This is an incredibly simple recipe and the biscuits keep for ages. When baked for the second time, they are quite hard, but this is the way that they should be – perfect for dipping into some vin santo at the end of a meal! One piece of advice… use a large serrated knife to slice the biscuits after their first baking – it gives the cleanest cut.
 

Ingredients:

300g plain flour
200g caster sugar
50g whole blanched almonds

50g whole pistachios (unsalted)

1 lemon, juice and finely grated zest

3 large eggs, lightly beaten
 

Method:

1. Line a large baking tray with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the flour, caster sugar, nuts and lemon zest in a large bowl and mix together so that everything is well incorporated. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the lemon juice and eggs.

3. Use a wooden spoon to mix everything together. The dough will be quite soft, but don’t worry about this. Turn out on to a lightly floured work surface and knead briefly. Form into a log shape about 8cms x 20cms and place on the prepared baking tray. Allow to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4.  Bake the biscuit log for 15-20 minutes until a light golden brown colour. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 160C/Fan Oven 140C/Gas Mark 2.

5. Remove the log from the baking tray and slice width-ways into thin slices about 1cm thick. Place on the baking tray and bake for a further 15 minutes, making sure that they do not colour too much.

6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
 

Makes 20-24 biscuits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raspberry & Pistachio Bakewell Tart

Raspberries are one of my favourite fruits – they have a sweet flavour but with an underlying tartness that I find particularly appealing. It is this quality that makes raspberries the perfect fruit for making into jams and jellies which require large proportions of added sugar. Raspberries can stand up to this sugar onslaught and still retain their distinctive flavour.

Although I love a traditional Bakewell Tart, with almond sponge/frangipane and raspberry jam, I decided that I wanted to try something a little bit different, but something that did not dramatically change the essential characteristics of a Bakewell Tart. The one thing that I was absolutely sure of was that I wanted my version to retain the raspberry element of a traditional Bakewell.

I initially toyed with the idea of making a hazelnut frangipane as raspberries and hazelnut go so well together, but to be honest, the decision had already been made for me by virtue of the fact that a large tin of pistachio paste that I had ordered online last week had been delivered the previous day. A Raspberry & Pistachio Bakewell Tart it would be!

I have made many recipes using pistachios which I have ground myself; whilst the taste has been fabulous they have always had a slightly muddy green colour, mainly because skinning pistachios is one of those thankless and frustrating tasks that just drive me crazy. The only way to achieve that beautiful pure green pistachio colour when they are ground is to ensure that not a trace of their papery brown skins remain. I researched this subject and what emerged is that all the top pastry chefs seem to use pistachio paste in cakes and desserts that require both the intensity of flavour and for the green colour to shine through. The skins are removed and a beautiful green paste is created. Although pistachio paste is not cheap, its colour and taste are amazing. It can be stored for quite a long time after it is opened, so I decided that I would take the plunge and bought a 1 kilo tin of the stuff – I think it’s a fairly good bet that I will be posting quite a few pistachio recipes over the coming weeks!

Anyway, back to my Bakewell… I was really pleased with how the tart turned out and there was no doubt about how delicious it was. It is true how the old saying goes… it IS impossible to invent a new wheel… because I was convinced that I had come up with a rather quirky take on a traditional Bakewell, but there are actually many similar versions to mine out there! Having said that; this one IS really good and the marriage of raspberry and pistachio together is sublime!

 

Ingredients:

Pastry:

200g plain flour

1 heaped tblsp of icing sugar

120g butter, chilled and diced

1 large egg yolk

1-2tblsp cold water

Pistachio Frangipane:

150g butter

150g caster sugar

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

150g ground almonds

65g pistachio paste

25g plain flour

To finish:

4tblsp good quality raspberry jam

150g fresh raspberries
 

Method:

Pastry:

1. Sift the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl. Rub in the diced butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and sprinkle in the water. Using a fork, or your hands, mix until the mixture comes together to form a dough.

2. Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured work-surface, knead briefly and shape into a ball. Wrap the dough in cling film and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to rest.

3. Preheat oven to 180C/ Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Grease a 3cm deep, 23cm round fluted tart tin with a removable base) with a little butter. Place a large baking tray in the oven to heat up.

4. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough in a circle large enough to fit into the prepared tin. Use to line the bottom and sides of the tin, trimming it to the top edge of the tin. Set aside.

Filling:

5. Place the butter and caster sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy. Gradually add in the eggs, beating well after each addition to ensure that they are fully incorporated. Mix in the ground almonds, followed by the pistachio paste and flour. Set aside.

To finish:

6. Using a small palette knife spread the raspberry jam in an even layer over the base of the pastry. Spread the pistachio frangipane evenly on top of the jam, making sure that you go out to the sides of the tart. Arrange the fresh raspberries on top of the pistachio frangipane, but don’t push them in too far or they will disappear into the tart as it bakes – merely perch them gently on top.

7. Bake in the preheated oven on top of the heated baking tray for 15 minutes and then reduce the heat down to 160C/Fan oven 140C/Gas Mark 2 and cook for another 25-30 minutes until the frangipane is just cooked and slightly risen. Check the tart about half way through the cooking time and if it is browning a little too quickly, cover with a little tin foil – shiny side turned upwards – to protect it).

8. Remove from oven and allow to cool before serving. The tart can be served chilled or as I prefer, at room temperature.
 

Serves 8-10.