Nayu's Recipes #14 Souptastic Part 1!

I made this!

Apologies to those who follow me on Twitter - link is on the right if you don't follow me. This post is a longer version on the weekend's tweets. For the benefit of those who aren't Twitter followers (I honestly don't mind if you aren't), over the weekend I was busy soup making, using the soup boxes from Abel and Cole, who don't sponsor me in any way. I'm loving the variety of their soup boxes, which includes 2 soups that for me provides 3 meals per soup recipe. The recipes are easy to follow, prep time can take a long time for me because of my general fatigue level and hand/arm weaknesses, so I do it all first rather than between steps of the soup as is suggested in the recipe.The post took a bit longer than anticipated to put together so it's in 2 parts as I  need to rest today. 

Whereas my recipe food usually has a recipe, because this was provided for me I don't think I'm able to share it with you. It may be on their website though!

Usually I do not cook 2 days in a row because it is super tiring (or should that be souper tiring?!) which is why I haven't blogged this week, but on that occasion it was simply easier to do it. Be warned tumeric can mildly stain your blender jug! I'm careful to take it out quickly but on this occasion the jug didn't fair so well. It's fine though, still works the same. 

Let's start!

The first soup was Persian Herb and Golden Beet Broth with salted yogurt. The melon isn't in the dish so please ignore it! The prep time was on the long side because there was so much to cut up. I think it said to grate the ingredients, but because I was whizzing it up in the blender before serving I didn't bother. A lot of the soups aren't blitzed but I hate lumpy soup, it makes me think it should be a stew or something, so I blitz it. I didn't think the golden beetroot would stain, since it's not the usual purple kind, it did a bit but nothing that couldn't be removed. 

 The tumeric is on the foil - to reduce staining and smells I always cut tumeric and garlic with foil on top of the chopping board. The cooking time was quite reasonable despite all the veg being small, because it needed a lot of simmering to let the flavours develop. It did give me inklings of ideas for future soup 

Not the Splatoon 2 kind of inkling girls!

Next up is what it looked like before blitzing: 

Yummy! Wish technology could provide smells....

then here's what I ate -- the yogurt dressing made it sublime! Next time I will add more beets as it was quite thin, but this is expected because it was meant to be veg in a broth, not a traditional soup. 

A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!!!

 I reused the herb bags for the soup destined for the freezer.

I fully recommend these soups, they are teaching me which flavours go together which is useful for future creations. I mainly stick with recipe boxes in the winter because it although it takes me energy to cook, I know the ingredients are high quality, providing lots of vitamins that everyone needs. That's also why I have the smoothie boxes too, which create 3 smoothies per box. More on them in future posts - I hope you look forward to part 2! Let me know if you've made soup recently, and/or if you've ever tried similar soup organic boxes! 

Nayu's Receipes #13 Gluten free and vegan cupcakes!

I hope you're all well as we reach the middle of the week. As promised in an earlier post I'm here to show you both the gluten free and the vegan cupcakes which I baked recently! They turned out really well, even if I did put the vegan chocolate frosting on the gluten free cupcakes - thankfully it was a gluten free frosting. I simply made up a lemon frosting as I had no more vegan chocolate. You don't have to miss out on these classic treats just because you have particular dietry needs. They can also be used to bake a whole cake, the cooking time would be longer but that's all. 

Especially when it's for other people!

I decided to use 2 different cupcakes rather than make a gluten free vegan recipe because gluten free flour would be an extra element that could go a bit wild since I'm used to baking cupcakes with eggs and butter. I can link you to the vegan recipe, which isn't my own but can be found on Minimalist Baker's One Bowl Vegan Funfetti Cupcakes. I simply omitted the funfetti as I didn't have any. 

I made the gluten free cupcakes first using my own unique recipe & the advice about gluten free flour from a friend. 

Gluten free cupcakes

 

Here they are with frosting on! Super yummy

Ingredients

Weigh however many eggs you want to use in their shell. 

Using the same weight for butter (or margerine/vegan equivalent), self-raising flour (can be gluten free), and sugar of your choice. 

I did use plain flour on this occasion, adding 3 teaspoons of baking flour. Don't use that amount!!! I'll try 2 or even 1 next time (if I don't use self-raising flour which is so much simpler). The cupcakes rose and spread like crazy!!! I had to bail out the mix part way through into extra cupcake cases, as they were too big.  

Method

Mix butter and sugar together until they are combined. 

Crack eggs into the mix (pick out any shell that gets in), add the flour and mix until combined.  

Pour in cupcake cases which are on a tray. This doesn't have to be a special cupcake tray, mine wasn't. 

Cook at 180C/356F in an oven. Cook for at least 10 minutes, until a knife goes through the middle and comes away clean. Times vary depending on both ovens and how much you fill the cupcakes. 

Vegan cupcake yumminess!

I'd learned my lesson when the next day I baked the One Bowl Vegan Funfetti Cupcakes (minus the funfetti), read the recipe and at first only filled the cases 1/4 full. When double checking the recipe I saw I'd read the amount wrong, it should be 3/4. I sort of stuck to a frazzle over half as I wasn't sure the science of eggless cupcakes worked. The only 'special' ingredient you need is apple cider vinegar, which can be exchanged for lemon juice. These baked beautifully, although did take a bit longer than expected to bake. Both the mix and the finished cupcakes tasted similar to cupcakes (if you're used to food tasting different to what a 'normal' version is). 

I was very pleased with the outcome and the frostings. My ingredients weren't measured at all. 

Vegan chocolate frosting (can also be used for a dairy version)

Yummy!

Melt a few small packets of vegan chocolate buttons 

Add a bit of non-dairy milk and non-dairy butter  

Mix well before slowly adding icing sugar until you reach the consistency you like. 

Note: Make sure you put them on the correct type of cupcakes! 

Lemon frosting (naturally vegan) 

More yummy frosting!

Squeeze some lemon juice in a bowl (I used 3/4 of a lemon)

Add icing sugar and extra non-dairy milk/normal milk/water until you get the consistancy you like. 

My vegan chocolate frosting was enough for half a batch of cupcakes, and the lemon frosting made enough for a whole batch of cupcakes. Because I was giving them to 2 friends I only used half of each batch, freezing the rest for another day. I froze the leftover lemon frosting too! There was no chocolate frosting left. 

I hope you enjoyed my vegan and gluten free cupcake baking adventure - please let me know if you decide to bake these!  I'm now going to spend the rest of my day reading and gaming! Today was a blogging day (mostly on my other blog) and now I'm resting up in preparation for my trip to Devon on Saturday!

Nayu's Recipes #9 How to make granola healthy

I love tropical granola which isn't this granola bowl (picture source)

This isn't a granola recipe that you'd find online. There are many of them, and I don't have the energy to handmake my granola. However, I do have an easy tip to make granola healthier. I adore granola in all it's crunchy granola-li-ness. (Go me for making up new words!) It's not the healthiest of cereal. I think muesli is healthier, and I tried muesli but I don't really like it, so granola remains. Some days I have straight granola (with milk), but there are other days I make healthier granola, and so can you! All you need is 1 vital ingredient. 

Yes, you are seeing cornflakes! Not sugar coated ones (which would defeat the point of healthier granola), but ordinary cornflakes mixed with granola make it a little healthier! It's simple, easy, and quick to do. To make it quicker you can pre-mix the cornflakes and granola in a tin, otherwise you can just add a handful to your granola and enjoy the lower calorie granola yumminess! (Another made up word?) 

Do you like mixing your cereals up for healthier/new combos? Or are you a toast and nutella breakfast person? 

Chocolately yumminess! (Picture source)

Nayu's Recipes #8 Speedy 3 veg stirfry

Sorry it's not the best picture, took it with my tablet camera.

With autumn most definitely on the way, I have plenty of meals prepared in the freezer since my body hates the cold & wet English weather so cooking is low on my agenda. Last week I needed to use up a home grown yellow courgette given to me by a family member, 

Yellow courgettes taste similar to green courgettes (at least they do to me), so green ones are good for this recipe too!

so I teamed it up with delicious aubergine and some peas to create a super speedy stirfry! 

Purple and delicious aubergine! Super yummy.

Ordinarily I like to start a stirfry by gently frying an onion, but I had none so didn't use it. I simple chopped the courgette and aubergine into quarters then sliced them. I added a bit of olive oil, and began cooking the veg. 

A smidge of olive oil goes a long way. You can use any oil, depending if you want a strong taste or a lighter taste.

The exact timing is unknown, since I did it to how cooked I like both veg. Part way through to help with the cooking I did add some water (instead of more oil) - water frying is super easy to do, and if you look it up online you'll find out all about it. I then added the peas, and let the 3 vegetables cook some more. 

Peas are super yummy, full of protein, and most people like them! I added mine straight from frozen but you can defrost them if you like

Once I was getting close to the veg being cooked to my taste I popped a microwave rice packet in the microwave, and crumbled 1 vegetable stock cube into my aubergine, courgette, and pea mix. I then added the rice once cooked, stirred it around and voila! My aubergine, courgette, and pea stirfry was ready! 

It tastes super yummy, and is an easy recipe to adapt to whatever vegetables you have. You don't have to use microwave rice, any rice will do, or if you want a change try some noodles. Whatever's in your store cupboard will be fine, and you can add whatever seasoning you fancy. Instead of a stock cube I sometimes use soy sauce and ginger, or I buy a stirfry sauce and add it. I'd love to hear what your go-to stirfry is!

I found a purple frying pan! Not mine (which is my family's and a boring black) but looks so cool! What colour would you have?

Nayu's Recipes #7 Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Getting ready to bake!

Yesterday I wanted to bake some cookies, so after I got my equipment and ingredients out I got baking! I followed this recipe, although I only used 2/3 of the recommended chocolate chips, baked them for about 10 minutes at half the size. 

Super tasty!! Ones on the lower left are baked a little more than the others.

Both the unbaked and baked cookie is totally delicious! I'm more a cookie than biscuit person, loving the softness that comes with delicious treats. While the first batch was baking, I halved the recipe, shaped the cookie mixture into balls and then put them in the freezer, so if I fancy a freshly baked cookie but don't have the energy to do all the baking I can simply take them out of the freezer and pop them in the oven. Simple! If you like them thick as I do, don't flatten the dough balls, they spread on their own accord.

I'd love to hear what your favourite cookie is, and whether you prefer soft cookies or crisp biscuits!

This is the best part of baking - often the food tastes better before it's baked too!

Nayu's Recipes #6 Nayu's Quick and Easy Mushroom Soup

If you want you could leave the soup unblended, like this, but I like smooth soup so I hit the blender! (not literally!)

Finally I can share my mushroom soup recipe! I did initially look online for a recipe, but after getting the gist of what goes into mushroom soup, and wanting a smaller quantity than most recipes created, I made it up myself. It took about 30 minutes from start to finish, possibly less but I can't remember the exact time.
Note: this is an unsponsered post, any links and brand mentions are because I like the products the company provides and wish to share them with you.

Winging it worked out extremely well for this dish. The silky smooth texture (thank you Vitamix!) teamed up well with the subtly, buttery flavour of mushrooms. Here's what I did, with the full recipe at the end post.

I took a small smidge of butter,

My onion looked about this size.

used it to gently fry a small chopped onion. 

Since they were going in a blender I roughly cut mine into slices

I then the entire organic portion provided by Able and Cole added the super tasty mushrooms which are delicious raw and cooked, and I think are underated in cooking. I cooked them for a few minutes with the butter and onion mix. 

Also delicious cold from the fridge as a drink!

Next I tipped in enough milk and some water to cover the mixture.

The essence of life

I crumbled in an instant stock cube for flavour, 

Other brands are fine too!

a bit of flour to thicken it,

Flour isn't just for baking bread and cakes!

Use as much or as little as you like!

then added a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and let the mixture simmer for a while. 

Yummy!

Once I judged it ready I tipped it into the blender, whizzed it up & voila! Mushroom soup ^o^

Simple, plain, wonderfully tasty!

Mushroom soup is often creamy: I didn't add any cream, but it was better than any tinned soup which I've tasted. Here's my recipe! 

Ingredients

Please note the quantities are estimated as I 'winged' the recipe. Adjust the quantity according to your own preferences,

butter, a small matchbox sized amount 

onion, egg-sized chopped into little cubes 

white mushrooms (any kind can be used) about 2 fists worth 

milk, 3/4 of a cup 

water, 1/4 of a cup 

vegetarian stock cube, x 1 (I think meat ones could be used if you prefer them)

plain flour, 1 tablespoon 

salt and pepper, a little of each 

How to Cook

Total time: 30 minutes, depending on how well you like some of the ingredients cooked.

Put the butter in a saucepan until it melts, stirring occasionally. 

Add the chopped onion, and keep stirring as they cook for a few minutes.

Tip in the chopped mushrooms, and keep stirring as they cook for a few minutes. 

Add milk and water to cover the mixture. 

Add the stock cube, flour, salt, and pepper then let the mixture simmer for several minutes. How long you leave it is entirely up to how cooked you like your ingredients. The flour will thicken the soup so keep stirring until any lumps have dissolved.

Please follow the instructions in  your blender - not all blenders can take hot liquid, in which case either wait until the soup is cool before blitzing it, or blitz it after it warms up a bit, then heat it up for eating after. I'm fortunate that my family has a Vitamax blender which creates silky smooth soups (hence this soup's title) but any blender will do the job. 

Place mixture in blender, and blend to your preferred thickness. 

Place in bowls and enjoy!

I hope you've enjoyed today's recipe - I'd love to hear if you try it out for yourself!

This is obviously not going to happen after making my recipe, but I spotted it while searching for cooking images and it made me laugh, especially as I've used still images of this cat in previous posts. Picture source.

Nayu's Recipes #5 Nayu's 3 P Soup

An ideal bowl of mint pea soup!

Due to blogging this morning (playing catch up with a few not entirely straight forward posts/emails), at the time of writing this post I haven't done any craft. That's not going to stop me from posting! I thought I'd share with you the Pea Pesto Soup I've made for lunch, which is super tasty, and adapted from this BBC Good Food recipe. 

The humble pea which comes from a pea pod is packed full of nutrients surprisingly including protein!

I adore peas. I adore mint pea soup, which I had a lot one year but it's expensive to buy, so I thought I may as well make some. I can't be doing with a recipe that requires cream (I don't have any on standby, and although I have some frozen I shall be freezing the leftover soup so definitely can't refreeze the cream), a recipe one  which takes ages to make as it will make me tired, and I can't even make one with mint in because I don't have any to hand. 

Wonderful pesto, sadly mine isn't made by hand

What I do have is an open jar of pesto! Pesto doesn't last forever, is super tasty, and in my view goes well with peas. 

This may already feature in your kitchen cupboard

Pea soup includes stock - I'm using a famous vegetarian stock cube from Oxo. 

That's pretty much it on the ingredient front, nice and simple. Now I'm off to make it! 

Pre-blitzing...

All whizzed up!

It's so tasty!!! It's 3 P soup because it has Peas, Pesto, and sweet Potato. 

You can leave the skin on this sweet potato! Mine was pre-cooked.

I wanted a bit more veg in it, so dug around in the freezer and grabbed a pre-portioned (by me) bag of veg. It had peas, sweet potato and a secret ingredient...

No tomato was used in the making of Nayu's 3 P Soup!

Mozzarella! A few chunks of this cheese made it extra delicious. We'll ignore the fact it's an 'M' food since Nayu's 3 Ps + 1 M Soup sounds more like a maths equation than food, and I'm not fond of maths, no offence to the subject.  

Time to give you the super easy recipe which you can adapt according to what veg you have, what flavours you want! 

Ingredients

 

Peas, 3 and a bit fists 

Sweet potato= 1 fist 

Mozzarella = 3 small chunks 

Stock cube = 1 

Shop bought pesto = a golf ball sized dollop 

Boiling water = just enough to cover the veg in the saucepan (I used a small pan. If you like soup thicker, use less.) 

How to cook 

Put vegetables and cheese in a saucepan. 

Add enough boiling water to cover the veg (see note in ingredients) 

Sprinkle in the stock cube. 

Put in the pesto. 

Stir well. 

Let the soup cook until hot (or however well cooked you like your veg). 

Pour into blender and blitz until at required consistency 

Please follow the instructions in  your blender - not all blenders can take hot liquid, in which case either wait until the soup is cool before blitzing it, or blitz it after it warms up a bit, then heat it up for eating after. I'm fortunate that my family has a Vitamax blender which creates silky smooth soups, but any blender will do the job. 

I'd love to hear what your favourite soup is, and if you try my recipe! Future soup flavours will include mushroom and butternut squash! (Not together)

My favourite cartoon cat likes to cook!

Nayu's Recipes #4 Buckwheat Porridge Part 2

Buckwheat rules!! Picture source

As promised the other day in Nayu's Recipes Buckwheat Porridge Part 1 which explains why I am a new fan and how to prepare it, today I've got pictures of the soaked method. 

Tasty milk! Picture source.

When I measured out the buckwheat, I put 1.5x the amount of milk, as I wanted to some extra. I added a smidge of cinnamon, 

I use ground cinnamon, which comes from the cinnamon sticks. Picture source.

and my  beloved soft brown sugar! 

I love this pretty dish! Sadly not mine. Picture source.

I mixed the ingredients all together, and put it in the fridge overnight. 

In the morning I got out the tub,

Naturally it's a cute tub!

lifted the lid, 

Ooo, I spot cinnamon!

then tipped it into my bowl! I loved how the cinnamon and sugar infused both the buckwheat and the milk. I can be fussy with spices but the cinnamon wasn't overpowering. I did have it cold as I fancied it that way, but it'll be easy enough to heat in the microwave. 

Oh so tasty!

And there you have it, my version of soaked buckwheat! I'll let you know of any variations ^o^ Let me know if you try it, and if you've got any yummy cereal suggestions!

It so is! Making buckwheat porridge is baking related ^o^