Butternut Squash Soup

"If you hate vegetables but love dessert, just make your vegetables taste like dessert."

                                           -Me 

                                                                            (I just made that up)

After having the Butternut Squash Soup at Blue Lemon a month or so ago, I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. It tasted liked dessert and I loved it. So I found this copycat recipe from the blog Favorite Family Recipes and thought it was pretty good. 

http://www.favfamilyrecipes.com/creamy-butternut-squash-soup.html

Their picture is a lot fancier than mine. They probably don't use their iPhone like I do.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ginger (freshly grated is best!)
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1/2 cup apple cider
• 8 cups butternut squash, cut into 1 inch cubes (about 2 lbs butternut squash)
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 1-2 cups heavy cream
• Croutons and chopped pecans, optional

My first time ever cutting up a butternut squash.

In a large pot, melt butter over medium heat. Add brown sugar and spices to melted better and stir for 1 minute. Add chicken stock and apple cider. Bring to a boil.

Add squash and carrots. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, or until squash and carrots can easily be poked with a fork. Check liquid in the pot while simmering. Add more chicken stock if necessary.

Pour all the contents of the pot into a blender. Puree until mixture is smooth. Blend in 1 cup of heavy cream. Gradually add more until the mixture reaches the consistency of a creamy soup. 

I don't have a blender so I used my magic bullet and had to puree the soup in two small batches.

Pour the contents of blender back into the pot and keep warm until ready to serve.

After serving soup into individual bowls, garnish with croutons and chopped pecans. 

I added whipped cream because I really wanted to make this vegetable taste as much like dessert as possible. Pretty darn close.

Caramelized Butternut Squash

Ok, I've been wanting to try a butternut squash recipe for a while now. I don't know why, probably because it's fall and I feel like I see pumpkins and squash everywhere. So for my first attempt at butternut squash I tried caramelized butternut squash. This recipe came from a cute blog called Sweet and Savory by Shinee.

It wasn't too difficult and tasted pretty great. 

All you need is:

• 10 cups (3lbs) butternut squash, cube

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

• ¼ cup brown sugar

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• ¼ teaspoon all spice

• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt

• 1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped (optional)

I totally cheated and bought pre-cut butternut squash, even though I have a whole squash sitting on my kitchen counter… oops. Anyway, spread the chunks out on a baking dish and mix up all the ingredients except for the walnuts. My sauce/mixture thing was clumpy and I didn't know if that was a bad thing or not… but I just kept going. 

Pour the mixture over the squash and mix it all around. Then put it in the oven at 400 degrees F and set the timer for 45 minutes. Here's me hoping it will turn out right. 

Every 10 minutes stir it up. 

Then add the walnuts the last 10 minutes. 

My squash came out looking like this.

Then I did it. I ate a vegetable. And I liked it. 

Close up shot.

This is my brother Austin and his girlfriend Katie enjoying the fancy butternut squash I made.