Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

I don’t know how to start telling you about this soup. I’m currently on my lunch break at my office, half-asleep and jittery from a combination of DayQuil and coffee, and I just drew a cartoon of a ham tapping away at a typewriter. On a normal day, I would tell you about how the slow burn of chipotle peppers and curry powder balance the buttery sweetness of the squash. I would also tell you about how a dollop of sour cream takes the edge off the heat and lends an extra bit of richness to an otherwise light bowl of soup and how nice the big crunchy croutons are. All I can tell you right now, though, is that my nose is stuffy and that I desperately wish I hadn’t forgotten the leftovers at home.

 

I whipped this soup together last night while Sarah made homemade sweet-potato fries and a lemony basil-garlic sauce in which to dip them in. The entire kitchen smelled delicious: the combined aromas of baking croutons, spicy-sweet butternut squash, browning sweet potatoes, and the lemon-basil-garlic blend made it smell like fall had landed smack-dab in the middle of the house… even here in temperate Florida.

 

 

We paired our soup with a brown ale from Cigar City Brewing Company, a local brewery in Tampa that makes some of the best beers in the country. We chose to drink a Bolita Double Nut Brown Ale because we thought the caramel and coffee flavors rounded out the very subtle sweetness of the soup. If you can’t get your hands on Bolita, there are lots of other fantastic nut brown ales out there. Some of my favorites Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, Lazy Magnolia’s Southern Pecan Nut Brown Ale, and Goose Island’s Nut Brown Ale.

 

Note: this recipe makes a lot of soup. You can very easily halve the recipe, and the spices can also be adjusted to suit your tastes.

 

 

SPICY BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP

Ingredients

• Two butternut squashes, peeled and cubed
• 2 tbsp. unsalted butter
• One large shallot, finely chopped
• One large can of chicken broth (mine was one of the giant 49 oz. cans)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. curry powder (I used Badia’s Jamaican style curry powder)
• 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, finely chopped *
• 1-2 tsp. garlic powder (to taste)
• Sour cream and croutons to garnish (recipe for croutons below)

 

In a large soup pot, melt the butter and add the shallot; cook until transparent. Add butternut squash and pour in just enough chicken broth to completely submerge the cubes (if you don’t have enough broth just make up the difference with some water).  Bring the whole thing to a simmer, cover, and let cook until the squash is tender.

 

When the squash is very tender, use a blender or food processor to puree the soup. PLEASE NOTE that when you puree very hot liquids you must do it in very small batches. If you don’t, the steam builds up in the blender and can blow the top off, which makes for a very big, very painful mess. Believe me. I have done it. pureed mine in two-cup batches and just poured the puree into a big bowl. It also helps to pulse the blender instead of setting it to go full-blast. It should only take a couple of pulses for the soup to be smooth. In your last batch, throw the chipotle pepper in and puree that up as well.

 

Once all your soup is smooth, return it to the pot, add your seasonings, and cook for a few more minutes. Serve hot with a dollop of sour cream and a couple of big croutons.

 

* You can find canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce in the ethnic food section of most grocery stores. One pepper gave the soup a nice slow heat that Sarah and Heath said was about as spicy as they liked it. Dave and I love spicy food and I would add another one if it was just for the two of us. You can also skip the pepper or use hot curry powder for a more delicate spice. This recipe would also be delicious with cumin, cinnamon, garam masala, or an endless combination of other spices. Experiment!

 

CROUTONS

 

Ingredients

• Half a loaf of Italian bread, cut into 2” cubes
• Lots of olive oil (enough to completely coat the cubes)
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Kosher salt

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine olive oil and bread: toss to coat. Lay out on a baking sheet and sprinkle evenly with salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. Bake until browned and crispy.

 

SWEET POTATO FRIES

 

Ingredients

• Sweet potatoes (1 per person)
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with tinfoil (it makes cleanup way easier).  Cut potatoes into fries; you can do big wedges or finger-sized fries like Sarah did. Lay the fries on the cookie sheets in a single layer: drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake until cooked through and starting to brown, about 30-45 minutes.

 

LEMONY BASIL-GARLIC SAUCE

 

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp. olive oil
• 2 tbsp. fresh basil leaves, chopped
• - ½ teaspoon ground pepper
• ¾ cup mayonnaise
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• Salt, to taste

 

Combine all ingredients in small bowl and whisk together. Keep chilled until ready to eat.

Blog full of birthday cakes...

It's been a long time, my friends.

Our last real entry was about a certain birthday cake I made for myself on my 24th birthday. Since then we've come full circle and now I've got a recipe for my 25th birthday cake.

It's been a heck of a year, my friends -- so much has happened! Sarah got married to the love of her life, my sister had a son and he is the cutest baby in the entire world (in my totally unbiased opinion), and ten thousand other amazing things, large and small, have happened to the both of us.

But the busyness has somewhat subsided and we're back with a vengeance. Our initial return to the kitchen was a triumph, and Sarah and I are now happy to present to you this easy-as-pie cake.

This recipe won out over several other alternatives. I wanted to do something autumnal for an October birthday and I was torn between this and a Russian apple cake. Another friend of mine surprised me with that apple cake at a party, though, so I spent a while peeling and chopping pears and beating batter together. After the unique challenge of photographing rapidly-melting whipped cream was more or less successfully completed, we dug into big warm, delicious slices of bittersweet chocolate and pear cake.

For all my last birthday cake was easy to put together, this one is even easier. The batter came together more quickly than the last (I didn't have to pulverize almonds into flour this time!), it baked quickly, and the whipped cream only took a few seconds to pull together. We followed this recipe pretty closely and only deviated a little bit from the original instructions.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup white flour

1 stick of salted butter

1 tbsp baking powder

3 eggs at room-temperature

3/4 cup of sugar

3 pears, peeled and diced (I wanted bosc but used anjou because they are the only pears Target sold. What the hell, Target)

3/4 cup chocolate morsels

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. TIP: If you, like Sarah or I, don't have a sifter, you can make due with a colander. Just dump the stuff in the colander and shake it through. As another tip, this cake would be delicious with half whole wheat flour and half white flour.

Brown the butter. Put the butter in a saucepan on medium-low heat and cook it until the solids have started turning golden-brown. The butter will develop a delicious nutty smell when it's finished. Take care not to burn it -- few things will screw up a good cake more than burned butter. Stir it frequently and make sure you scrape the sides and bottom of the pan to prevent the solids from sticking. When it's done, move it off the flame but keep it warm.

In a larger bowl, whip the eggs until they're pale and thick. Unless you have immense forearms and are not easily tired, I suggest you use electric beaters. This step takes a long time. When the eggs are done, add the sugar and whip them some more (see why an electric beater is necessary?). When the mixture starts to lose volume, use a spatula to fold in about half the flour and baking powder. Then pour in about a third of the butter, then about a third of the flour mixture, etc., until all the flour and butter have been added. It is important not to overmix the batter at this point -- if you overwork it you'll get a dense, gross cake.

Pour the batter into a greased, floured pan. I used Sarah's springform pan, which was handy, but a regular cake pan should do just fine. Please note that the amount of batter will look kind of insignificant next to the amount of chocolate and pear you've got -- I even read back over the recipe to make sure I hadn't mis-measured something. Don't worry, just pour it in. Distribute the chocolate and pear over the surface of the batter and pop it in the oven. The batter will rise and envelop the toppings.

Bake until the cake is golden-brown and firm all the way through. It's a bit tricky to judge without sticking a knife in it -- the pears I had were pretty juicy and it took about an hour for ours to be done. Check it at 40 minutes and periodically after that.

Remove the cake from the pan when possible and let cool until just warm. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream.

FOR THE WHIPPED CREAM

- 1 cup heavy whipping cream

- Splash of vanilla extract

I didn't want a sweet whipped cream -- the cake was sweet enough -- but you can add sugar if you'd like. Combine the ingredients in a large bowl and whip them 'til it looks right. If the cream is room temperature it will only take a minute or two. For heaven's sake, use a big bowl and work up to full whipping speed. I started with a small bowl and sprayed heavy whipping cream everywhere, which prompted Sarah to arch her eyebrow at me and tell me that I was cleaning the kitchen when we were done.

I did. Even on my birthday.

Hungry

Welcome back to our kitchen.

It's been a long time, we know.

You've been missed.

Hope you're hungry!

Almond Brown Butter Cake

This year I made my own birthday cake.

That might sound a little weird, but I promise it's not. It's actually pretty perfect -- I think it's going to be a tradition. You should try it sometime.

I am not a tremendous cake fan. Traditional two-layer birthday cakes slathered in buttercream frosting are all right, but after 23 years I wanted something different. A standard go-to birthday cake in my family is German-chocolate cake. My little sister always gets a chocolate cake that you bake in a skillet and finish with caramel, fudge, and pecans. Given the fact that the birthday cakes in my family tend to be rich and chocolatey, I needed to come up with another recipe to add to our repertoire. I also needed to find one that didn't involve using boxed cake mix. My mother and sister are both fantastic bakers and I feel like I need to keep up with them -- and boxed cake mix doesn't fit that bill.

Enter this almond brown butter cake.

If you're not a from-scratch baker and are used to boxed cake mix (like I am!), don't be alarmed. This is a pretty easy recipe: if I can do half of it with a beer in one hand while teasing Sarah about her frantic photo-editing session, you can do this. And the results are gratifying. Very, very gratifying.

The original recipe, which I found here, calls for hazelnuts instead of almonds. But normal people only eat hazelnuts at Christmas, apparently, because not one grocery store in town had them in stock. It also calls for browned butter (obviously), which is fantastic, and it's topped with a chocolate ganache that's about impossible to mess up. It would also be very good with syrupy cherries or something similar.

Please don't be intimidated by this recipe. It's not as easy as mixing up a box of cake mix, but it's not at all hard and you'll be rewarded at the end.

Almond Brown Butter Cake

Ingredients

For the cake:

-5 oz. (about 1 heaping cup) blanched almonds

-1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter

-1/2 vanilla bean

-1 1/3 c. powdered sugar

-1/3 c. flour

-5 extra-large or 6 large egg whites

-3 tbsp. granulated sugar

For the ganache:

-4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate

-1/4 c. heavy cream

-1/2 tsp. instant coffee granules

Garnish:

-Sliced almonds (optional)

Process

Preheat the oven to 350. Spread blanched almonds on a cookie sheet and bake until golden-brown and toasty -- about 5-8 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool.

Prepare a 10" cake pan either by lining the bottom with parchment paper, buttering it, spraying it with cooking spray (that's the route I went), or a combination of all three. You can't really be too thorough.

Place butter in a medium saucepan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and use a knife to scrape the pulp and seeds into the pan. Add the vanilla pod to the butter and melt it over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until the solids in the butter browns. Browned butter smells nutty and rich and is delicious. Keep an eye on it, though, because browned butter can quickly become burned butter if you're not paying attention. And burned butter is the pits.

Once your butter is sufficiently cooked, remove and discard the vanilla pod. Set the butter aside to cool.

Use a food processor to grind your toasted almonds to a fine powder. In a large bowl, whisk together the ground almonds, powdered sugar, and flour. Set aside.

Combine egg whites and granulated sugar in another large bowl. Beat with an electric beater until it forms stiff peaks. The texture you're aiming for is sort of like hair mousse. But don't think about it that way. They're much more delicious than hair mousse.

Alternate folding the butter/vanilla mixture and almond/flour mixture into the egg whites, making sure all ingredients are thoroughly combined. Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake at 350 until the cake is golden-brown and a fork inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. This took our cake 40-45 minutes, but it can take as long as an hour. Check regularly after about 35 minutes to make sure you don't burn yours. When your cake is done, carefully remove it from the pan and let cool on a wire rack for at least a half-hour.

When your cake is mostly cool, mix up the ganache and toast the sliced almonds. In a double boiler, melt together heavy cream, chocolate, and instant coffee, stirring occasionally until smooth. If you're like us and you don't have a double-boiler, you can fake it by filling a large pot with water and putting your ingredients in a smaller metal pot or mixing bowl. Place the smaller pot in the large one: the water shouldn't be able to splash into the ganache. Learn from my mistake: keep an eye on your almonds while you make the ganache. I burned mine and spent nearly 10 minutes picking the good almonds out of the  burnt ones.

Transfer cake to a serving plate. Pour ganache over the cake, making sure it's evenly distributed. Sprinkle with toasted sliced almonds before serving.

All our love,
Sarah and Abby


PS. Florence and the Machine.
You're welcome.

Brie Bites with Jam (and Sangria!)

When Sarah and I discussed what we would make for the next installment of Two Girls and a Measuring Cup, we immediately started thinking of fall recipes. I actually believe that we exchanged e-mails for the better part of a half-hour about soup. Just soup. And then we started talking about bread and soup, and stew, and dahl, and so forth.

But let's get real here, guys. We live in Florida and, despite the fact that it's September and most people in the United States are pulling out sweaters and excitedly looking forward to apple orchards and pumpkin-carving and hay rides, we are still experiencing temperatures in the 90s and close to 60% humidity. The thought of stewing anything, let alone the thought of sitting down to a big bowl of piping-hot lentils when it's 90 degrees outside, is pretty unbearable.

So we decided to make this our last summer recipe, our sort of "Good-bye Summer, hello Autumn" recipe. It's dead easy, requires very little time in an oven, and is not hard to make after a glass or two of sangria. And don't worry... we provided our sangria recipe, too.

These brie bites are pretty awesome. On top of being easy to make, they're delicious, relatively inexpensive, and fancy-looking enough to impress people at the upcoming holiday parties you know are going to happen this year.

Our sangria recipe is a little less cut-and-dry. Sarah and I decided we wanted to make something with a lot of fruit to set off the jam... and that's where our plan pretty much ended. After sampling three bottles of wine (a.k.a. swigging the wine directly out of the bottle and looking thoughtful for a moment), Sarah emptied most of a bottle of -- and I am not making this name up -- "Layer Cake Primitivo a.k.a. Zinfandel" into a pitcher. Much to our disappointment, the wine only filled the pitcher up about halfway. But not to worry! Sarah also emptied half a bottle of Keel and Curley Strawberry Riesling (it tasted like strawberry soda -- no lie) and about a third of a bottle of sparkling white grape juice into the same pitcher (Sarah - "I sound like an friggin' alcoholic"). After she added a few handfulls of frozen blackberries, raspberries, and peaches to the mix our sangria was complete. I'll attempt to simplify this recipe below but I'm not making any promises.

So here you go, friend. Mix up a pitcher of sangria, make a mess in the kitchen, and have yourselves a farewell-to-summer party.

Brie Bites with Jam


Ingredients
- 14 sheets phyllo dough (thawed)*
- 4-5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
- 7 oz brie
- Jam (we used seedless raspberry jam)

Process
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Carefully separate two sheets of phyllo dough from the rest. Use a very slightly damp paper towel to cover the sheets you're not working with -- this will keep them from drying out and cracking. Lay the two sheets of phyllo dough on a work surface and use a pastry brush to brush the top with butter. Layer two more sheets of the phyllo dough on top and repeat the process until you've used 6 sheets of dough. We used one extra layer of phyllo dough on top that we didn't brush with butter, but you don't have to.

Cut the stack of buttered phyllo dough into squares that are approximately 3.5"x3.5." Press the squares into the cups of a tartlet pan like this one. Put in the oven for 3-5 minutes, or until the edges have just started to brown.

While the cups are pre-baking, cut the brie into cubes. When the edges of the phyllo cups have started to brown, press the cheese into the cups and return to the oven. Bake an additional 5-8 minutes until the phyllo dough is golden-brown and the cheese is melted.

When the brie cups are done, remove them from the oven and let them cool for a few minutes. Carefully lift the cups out of the pan and onto a serving plate. Spoon a dollop of jam into each cup before serving.

*If you're really  pressed for time, many grocery stores carry pre-made phyllo cups that are ready to fill. They're easy, but they're not as pretty!

Peach and Berry Sangria, Sarah and Abby Style (Sort Of)


NOTE: Please understand that these measurements are approximate. We know lots of people don't have random mostly-full bottles of wine in their refrigerators and have tried to adjust accordingly.

Ingredients
- 1 bottle sweet red wine (we used Layer Cake Primitivo, which is a red Zinfandel)
- 1/2 bottle sweet white wine (we used Keel and Curley Strawberry Riesling)
- 1/3 bottle sparkling white grape juice
- Frozen raspberries, blackberries, and peaches

Process
Pour as much frozen fruit as you see fit into a large pitcher. Add wines and juice and adjust to taste. Let sit for a while as you cook or drink it while you cook, which is less constructive but considerably more fun.