Roasted Tomato and Bread Soup

A few mornings ago I was rudely awoken by a familiar sound, it was still dark outside and the faint 'shuck, shuck, shuck' came drifting through my bedroom window (yes, I sleep with the window wide open all year round). It took me a few minutes to realise that I was listening to the first car de-icing of the year.  Hurrah, it's soup weather!

Adding bread into your soup may sound a bit wierd, but it's actually really delicious!  It works as a thickener where you'd usualy have something like potato or cream.  

I like to add chilli to any tomato based soup I make, I'm a bit of a spice fiend you see.  If you like your food a bit milder, just leave it out.

Tomato soup it the ultimate comfort food in my books.  It's like a hug in a mug, warm and delightfully thick.  

What is your favorite soup to keep you warm during the Winter months? I'm always looking for soupy insperation.

Tomato and Bread Soup

Ingredients

• 1kg Tomatoes on the vine
• 1 bulb Garlic, peeled
• 1 red onion, chopped into wedges
• 750ml Vegetable stock
• 1 Bunch of basil
• 2tsp Chilli flakes
• 1 Loaf of ciabatta
• 1tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
• Drizzle Extra virgin olive oil

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 200C and grab a large roasting tray.
2. Cut the tomatoes in half and arange them cut side up on the roasting tray. Sprinkle the chopped onion around the tomatoes followed by the peeled garlic cloves. Season with salt, pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 45 minutes until everything is nicely caramalised.
3. Pour everything into a large saucepan followed by the stock. Roughly chop most of the basil, keeping aside a few of the smaller leaves for garnish, and add to the pan along with the chilli flakes. Tear half of the ciabatta loaf into the soup and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Add the balsamic vinegar to the soup before blitzing with a hand blender till nice and smooth. Check the seasoning and serve with the remaining ciabatta, toasted. 

This post has been added to the No Croutons Required link up from Lisa's Kitchen and Tinned Tomatoes.

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Candy Apple Bar

When I was a little girl one of my favorite autumnal treats was a candy apple.  Not those lurid red specimens that would pull your teeth right out of your head, but the chocolate covered apples, dipped in hundreds and thousands. Yum!  Nowadays I'm not so fussed by apples, as my gran would say 'the juice isn't worth the squeeze'.  I'd never pick up an apple and just bite straight in, but hand me a bowl of ready sliced fruit and I'll happily munch away till the cows come home.  

If, like me, you can't be bothered with a full apple but still fancy a nice nostalgic treat, then this candy apple bar is for you.  It's also the perfect way to sneek an extra portion of fruit into fussy kids, we'll just ignore all the chocolate and caramel for now, shall we!

Simply chop up a few apples, skewer them on a stick and away you go.  If you're planning on taking your candy apple bar on the road, picnic time ahoy, simply dip your sliced apples in ginger beer.  The citric acid slows the browning process thus keeping your apples pretty for longer.

The fun thing about this is it's fully customisable.  I used a mixture of chocolate sauce and caramel sauce for dipping but melted white chocolate would work beautifully too.  For the topping station I used mini chocolate beans, mini marshmallows, chopped hazelnuts, crushed oreos, crushed digestives and toffee chunks.  The combinations are endless, coconut would be a wonderful addition and popping candy would go down an absolute storm with the little ones.

Such a fun little idea, if you give it a try please do tag me on Instagram at Katie_Petlamb. I'd love to see your creations.

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Easy Bakes - Maple Pecan Breakfast Pinwheels

Sometimes the lure of being a domestic goddess is just too much to ignore.  That kickass double chooclate babka on pinterest, or those super cute rainbow bagels you saw on Buzzfeed, they look doable.  That is until you read the instructions, look at your watch and realise aint nobody got time for that, before pulling out a tube of ready made cookie dough from the back of the fridge and eating it raw.  

What if I can tell you there's a way to fake it?  Like these maple pecan breakfast pastries, they look pretty complex right? Wrong! They are the easiest, tastiest morsels ever and you can totally pretend to be the ultimate domestic goddess, drowning in compliments while you gush about your handmade pastries. Nobody needs to know they only took you ten minutes to whip up with ingredients you probably already have on hand.  

I'll always recommend you use all butter puff pastry for everything, it just tastes better, and even better if you buy it in ready rolled sheets. Lazy girls unite!

There's no end to the wonderful concoctions you can whip up with just a sheet of puff pastry and a few other ingredients.  I've been in suffocating breakfast luxury for weeks.  I'll be sure to share some more of my creations with you guys soon.

Maple Pecan Pinwheels

Ingredients

• 1 Sheet of ready rolled all butter puff pastry
• 150g Pecan nuts
• 100g Dark brown suagr
• 3tbsp Maple syrup
• 25g Unsalted butter, melted
• 1 Large egg, beaten with a little milk
• 50g Apricot jam
• 200g Icing sugar
• 3tbsp Water
• 1/2tsp Vanilla extract

Cooking Directions

1. In a food processor pulse the pecans until finely chopped, you can also do this by hand just ensure the pieces are nice and fine. Pour the nuts into a bowl and mix with the maple syrup and melted butter, set aside while you prepare your pastry.
2. Preheat the oven to 175C and line two baking trays with baking parchment.
3. Unroll your chilled pastry and cut into six equal squares. Transfer your squares to the baking sheets, leaving room between each square. To shape the pinwheels cut a line from each corner of the square to almost the middle, leaving around a 3cm space uncut. Put a tablespoon of the pecan mixture into the center of each square before folding alternate corners into the middle of the pastry and pressing down. Make sure you work quickly as the dough becomes harder to work with the warmer it gets, the best way to combat this is to keep one tray in the fridge while working on the other.
4. Brush each pastry with the beaten egg and bake for 18-20 minutes until golden brown and crisp. Allow to cool slightly.
5. While cooling make your glaze. In a small saucepan heat the apricot jam with 2tbsp of water until runny. Combine the icing sugar and water until smooth and transfer to a piping bag, snip the end to make a small hole. Brush each pastry with the sticky glaze before drizzling with the icing.

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Bloody Halloween Cocktails

A friend recently said to me 'Katie, in your house every day is Halloween.' She wasn't wrong! We're big fans of October 31st in this household and this year we'll be handing out candy, watching my favorite psycopath stalk his innocent camp councellors and sipping on these bloody beauties.  It'll be a graveyard smash!

A delicious mix of vodka, chamboard and pomegrannet juice these babies will have you in the Halloween spirit in no time.  You'll be itching to get out and party with those skelletons.

Bloody Halloween Cocktails

Ingredients

• 100ml Vodka
• 50ml Chamboard
• 250ml Pomegranate Juice
• 4 Tinned Lychees
• 4 Blueberries

Cooking Directions

1. To make the eyeballs simply pop a blueberry into the hollow of a tinned lychee and skewer two eyeballs onto a cocktail stick.
2. In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake together the vodka, Chamboard and pomegranate juice.
3. Strain into two ice filled glasses (top up with any remaining pomegranate juice)
4. and garnish with your gruesome eyeballs. Enjoy.

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Spicy Tofu Ramen

There is nothing more comforting than a big bowl of steaming hot ramen on a cold day.  Granted we're still waiting for that beloved Autumn chill up in Newcastle, but that won't stop me willing the leaves to turn amber and the nights to draw in dark.  I long for hats, jumpers and cosy mittens. Long walks in the brisk Autumn air and settling down in front of an old movie with a huge bowl of spicy tofu ramen.

Since our household became mostly meat free (I still sneak some animal into my portions from time to time), I've really came to enjoy tofu.  Almost to the point where I don't miss the meat in most of our favorite meals.  I actually prefer these little cubes of beancurd in fajitas to chicken these days, I never thought I'd say that!  

While I am enjoying eating tofu, preparing it is a bit of a ball-ache. Pressing out  the excess liquid is a task I can do without after a hard day at work.  That's where Cauldron* marinated tofu pieces come in. Pre-squeezed, pre-chopped and pre-marinated, they're my little lifesaver.

There's one thing you simply must not skip when making this ramen, and that is the soft boiled egg.  Yes, peeling a soft boiled egg is as close to hell as you can get but I promise it's worth the effort.  I'll even go as far as to say it's my favorite part of the whole meal.

Spicy Tofu Ramen
Adapted from Pinch of Yum 
 

Ingredients

• For the Ramen:
• 1 Onion
• 1tbsp Red miso paste or powder disolved in 125ml boiling water
• 1tbsp White miso paste or powder disolved in 125ml boiling water
• 3tbsp Sambal Oelek - chilli paste found in Asian supermarkets
• 6 Garlic cloves
• 2" Piece of ginger
• 3tbsp Mirin
• 2tbsp Olive oil
• 1tbsp Sesame oil 
• For the Broth:
• 1 pack Cauldron marinated tofu pieces
• 1tbsp Olive oil
• 4 Large eggs
• 150g Chestnut mushrooms
• 1ltr Vegetable stock
• 350ml Unsweetened soy milk
• 200g Ramen noodles - Thin egg noodles
• 4 Spring onions

Cooking Directions

1. Put all of the miso paste ingredients and pulse until it forms a thick, spicy paste. You'll only need around half of the mixture so pop the rest in a tupperware box and freeze for a later date.
2. Heat 1tbsp olive oil in a large, deep frying pan and brown the tofu until crispy. Add 3tbsp of the miso paste and stir to coat the tofu. Fry for another minute then tip it out on a plate for later.
3. For the broth, tip the sliced mushrooms into the tofu pan and fry until brown. Add 1tbsp of the miso paste and fry for another minute. Add in the soy milk and stock and bring the broth to a simmer. Place the remaining spicy miso paste in a metal sieve and lower it into the broth. Using a spoon stir the paste around the sieve, pushing the juicy bits through until most of it has dissolved. Discard whatever remains. Don't just tip the paste right into the broth as this will make the soup lumpy and thick, eww! Give the broth a little taste and adjust the seasoning to your liking.
4. Bring two pans of water to the boil. In one pan cook your ramen noodles to the packets instructions. Pop the 4 large eggs in the other pan, boil for 7 minutes before removing from the pan and running under cold water to stop the cooking process. Peel the eggs carefully and set aside.(I usually do this under running water as the shell comes away a little easier)
5. Divide the cooked noodles between four bowls and top up with the mushroom broth. Top each bowl with a handful of tofu, some chopped spring onions and a boiled egg cut in half. Drizzle with a little sesame oil and enjoy. 

*Not sponsored, just really like the product :)

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