Homemade Chilled Butternut Squash Soup
Homemade Mosaic Cake
Tonight we had our friend Brad over for dinner. I made a 4 course meal but only wanted to highlight the first and last courses. The full menu included chilled butternut squash soup, blueberry balsamic salad, Orange BBQ Chicken and for dessert the Mosaic cake. Here is the recipe for the soup, it was pretty easy and very tasty I found it on foodnetwork.com. I chilled it because at the time our apartment was 80 degrees and I did not feel like eating anything hot. I did not have any nutmeg, so I substituted it with cinnamon and ginger.
Ingredients
- 1 (2 to 3 pound) butternut squash, peeled and seeded
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 6 cups chicken stock
- Nutmeg
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Cut squash into 1-inch chunks. In large pot melt butter. Add onion and cook until translucent, about 8 minutes. Add squash and stock. Bring to a simmer and cook until squash is tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove squash chunks with slotted spoon and place in a blender and puree. Return blended squash to pot. Stir and season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Serve.
The Mosaic Cake is an interesting story. About a week ago I made some homemade biscuits. I did not have any buttermilk so I had to improvise. I remembered my mother telling me that you can make buttermilk with white vinegar and milk. However, I thought you needed equal parts vinegar and milk. That was not the case. to make buttermilk you need 1 TBSP Vinegar and the rest milk (whatever quantity it calls for.) Needless to say, the biscuits were disgusting. So I googled "how to repurpose leftover biscuits" and found this recipe. I never like doing exactly what the recipe says, so I added some honey, cinnamon and chocolate chips. The recipe is from a European blog, so the measurements need to be tweaked.
Mosaic Cake
500 gr. of biscuits of any kind, can be a mix of different varieties.
125 gr. of butter
225 ml. of milk (1 glass)
60 gr. of cocoa powder (4 tablespoons)
100 gr. of sugar (4 tablespoons)
A handful of chestnuts or hazelnuts (optional)
Grated coconuts for decoration ( optional )
Step by step guide to this delicacy:• Make the biscuits into little pieces and put in a big deep bowl. • In a small pan melt the butter.• Mix the cocoa powder and sugar in.Stir till the sugar has fully melted. • Add the milk and stir enough times to make sure that all ingredients have mixed in. • Add the sauce onto the biscuit pieces. • Add the broken chestnuts or hazelnuts in if you like.• Make a dough by stirring with a spoon or with your hands gently.• After that keep the dough in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes so that it hardens a bit and becomes ready to be shaped.• Take the dough out of the refrigerator, put it on a flat and preferably thin & long plate like a rectangle or oval. • Shape it with your hands as you like. You can roll it and make it like a long cylinder or you can shape it as a pyramid like my mother did, by making its two sides flat.• Sprinkle some grounded coconut over it like snow flakes if you want.• Put the mosaic cake in the freezer and wait for a few hours. • After that slice it and serve it.
Moral of the story: Never trash you failures. Turn them into something new, delicious and creative. Until next time, keep eating :)
