Ingredients

A knob of butter

1 onion, finely diced

5 parsnips, peeled and diced

salt and pepper

500ml vegetable stock

1 tbsp clear honey

2 bay leaves

2 – 3 tsp turmeric

310g natural yoghurt

Cayenne pepper and ground cumin to taste

Method

1.Melt the butter in a medium sized pan, add the onion and cook gently until soft and transparent – do not allow to brown.

2. Add the parsnips with a little salt and pepper, stir together and cook gently for 4-5 minutes.

3. Add the stock, honey, bay leaves and turmeric and bring to the boil. Then reduce the heat and simmer gently for 25 minutes until the parsnips are soft.

4. Discard the bay leaves, place the cooked parsnips and yoghurt into a blender and blend until smooth.

5. Return the soup to the pan, add the cayenne pepper and cumin to taste and stir well. Adjust the seasoning if necessary and serve.

Ta-dah! The perfect soup for a cold day – enjoy with some delicious sourdough or crusty bread. Yum!

My beautiful tea towel from Love Fibre

Our lovely friend Fiona made us the most wonderful tea towel for Christmas (it’s obviously going to be making an appearance in lots of my food photos from now on!). Isn’t it amazing? The fabric is hand woven and it’s so gorgeous! You can see more of Fiona’s work on her website – everything is handmade on the Isle of Tiree (click here to see photos we took when we went to stay a few years back!). Thank you, Fiona!

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Ingredients

400g dark chocolate, broken into chunks

25g cocoa powder

250g golden caster sugar

250g butter, plus extra for greasing the tin

1 tbsp ground ginger

140g ground almonds

6 large eggs, separated

For the icing

100g butter, chopped

50g dark chocolate, broken into chunks

200g icing sugar, sifted

2 tbsp ground ginger

A few chunks of crystallised ginger, cut into small chunks

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease a 20 x 30cm cake tin, and line the base and sides with baking parchment. Melt the chocolate, cocoa, sugar and butter together in a saucepan over a very low heat. Once the chocolate and butter have melted and sugar dissolved, remove from the heat and stir in the ginger and almonds, followed by the egg yolks, one at a time

2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Using a metal spoon, stir a couple of spoonfuls of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture to loosen before very gently folding in the rest.

3. Gently scrape into the tin. Bake for 30-35 mins until the top looks set and the centre doesn’t wobble too much. Sit the cake tin on a wire rack and leave to cool completely.

4. Once cool, make the icing. Put the butter, chocolate, cocoa, icing sugar, ground ginger and 4 tbsp water in a pan. Gently heat, stirring, until you have a smooth icing. Pour over the cake (still in its tin), leave for 1-2 mins to cool slightly, then scatter over the ginger. Cool completely (you can also store in the fridge if you bring out to room temperature about 20 mins before serving) before cutting into bars.

The photos don’t do these chocolate gingerbread brownies with fudgy icing much justice! Needless to say, they weren’t around for long.

This post is part of my photos for #ColourMyEveryDay – an Instagram photo challenge with @adventuresandteaparties. Find out more about it in my previous post, where I also shared some lovely autumnal recipes. What new recipes have you been making recently?

Post updated 12th February 2020.

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Pumpkin season is well and truly here, and I thought it would be fun to put together a selection of perfect pumpkin recipes for autumn! I’ve been taking part in #ColourMyEveryDay with the lovely Joanna from Adventures and Tea Parties, and today’s prompt is ‘food’. I’ve been a little quiet over on my blog recently, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to write a post and share some of the pumpkin recipes from the archives! I love pumpkin as it’s such a versatile ingredient, working in savoury and sweet dishes. So here’s a selection of a few recipes I’ve enjoyed making.

Pumpkin lemon and poppy seed loaf

This is such a delicious cake – the lemon works so well with the pumpkin! Click here for the recipe.

Squidgy pumpkin and ginger loaf

I love ginger cake, and the pumpkin makes this really moist. Yum! Click here for the recipe.

Pumpkin, carrot and bacon soup

Pumpkin is perfect for soup, which is just what you need on a chilly autumn day! Simply leave out the bacon to make a veggie version – it’s really delicious! Click here for the recipe.

New pumpkin recipes to try

Here are some other yummy-looking recipes using pumpkin – I’ll definitely be giving some of these a go!

Pumpkin houmous from BBC Good Food

Creamy pumpkin and lentil soup from BBC Good Food

Pumpkin, basil, goat’s cheese and fig tart from George Eats

Pumpkin fries from Clean Food Crush

Vegan pumpkin pie from Delicious Magazine

Pumpkin scones from Delicious Magazine

Pumpkin samosas from Asda Good Living

#ColourMyEveryDay

If you’d like to take part in #ColourMyEveryDay there’s still time to get involved! Follow @adventuresandteaparties and make sure you tag Joanna and use the hashtag when you post. The prompts are below!

And in case you have missed it, I was featured on the Adventures and Tea Parties blog recently as part of Joanna’s Blog Gems feature – read more here! So much to do this autumn What are you plans?

The post Perfect pumpkin recipes for autumn appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

A couple of weeks ago, me and my friend Daria had a little catch up in town – we were meant to be doing LGMC errands but ended up spending most of our time having lunch…and then cake! We both had some really yummy roasted tomato and mascarpone soup for lunch, and I decided to have a look and see if I could recreate it at home because it was THAT good.

I found this recipe on the BBC Good Food website and it’s pretty close to what we had for lunch – yay! I’ll definitely be making this again.

Ingredients

1kg very ripe tomatoes
pinch golden caster sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
sprig of thyme and 2 fresh bay leaves, tied together
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tbsp sundried or normal tomato purée
600ml vegetable stock
2 tbsp mascarpone cheese (or use double cream as alternative)

Method

1. Heat oven to 170C/150C fan/gas 3 – 4. Bring a pan of water to the boil and get a bowl of iced water at the ready. Cut a small slit in the bottom of each tomato then plunge into boiling water in batches for 10 secs then lift out into the iced water.

2. Drain and peel the tomatoes then halve and place on a baking tray cut side up. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and the sugar. Drizzle with the vinegar and 1 tbsp of the olive oil. Roast the tomatoes for 1hr until semi-dried and set aside.

3. Heat the remaining oil in a large saucepan and cook the onion and carrot gently for about 10 mins until very soft. Add the tied herbs and garlic and cook for a minute more.

4.Stir in the tomato purée then tip in the roasted tomatoes and any juices from the tray. Pour over the stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil then turn the heat down and simmer for 10 mins.

5.Remove the tied herbs and discard. Add the mascarpone then take off the heat, blitz well with a hand blender. If you want a smoother soup then it can be sieved but this isn’t really necessary.

6. The soup can now be cooled and kept for 3 days in the fridge or frozen for up to 1 month. For a dinner party, serve the soup with a sprig of thyme and a drizzle of good quality olive oil. Enjoy with some delicious bread – you can find my tried and tested bread recipe here.

Post updated 17th February 2020.

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Ingredients

For the Parkin
110g butter, melted and cooled
250g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
225g black treacle
125ml Guinness
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs, lightly beaten
200g caster sugar

For the frosting (optional)
100g white chocolate (the Green and Black’s white chocolate works really well!)
75ml double cream
60g whole fat cream cheese

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (160C for a fan oven) gas mark 4. Grease a 23 x 10cm loaf tin and line with baking parchment, leaving roughly a 5cm overhang so that you can remove the cake more easily later.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon and cloves together in a medium bowl and set aside.

3. Put the treacle and Guinness into a medium pan and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat and add the bicarbonate of soda. The mixture will bubble and foam; set aside until it settles down.

4. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together until thickened and pale. Drizzle in the butter and whisk to combine. Then whisk the Guinness mixture into the eggs.

5. Sift the flour mixture over the liquid ingredients and gently fold together until combined. Pour into the prepared tin (leave about 1.5cm at the top for the Parkin to rise!) and bake for 1 hour or until a cocktail stick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely.

7. For the frosting, break the white chocolate into a bowl. Heat the double cream in a pan, until very hot but not boiling and pour the hot cream over the white chocolate to melt it. Stir until melted and set aside to cool for a few minutes.

8. Then, spoon the cream cheese into a bowl then gradually add the white chocolate mixture and stir until combined. Set aside to cool a little, until thick enough to ice. When ready, spread the icing over the top of the cake – you could add some sprinkles too if you like.

Enjoy!

I originally used this frosting in a recipe for rich chocolate almond cake, which you may also enjoy!

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