A Savory & Sweet Sunday

Yes!  Caramelized onion and mushroom soup which I was able to broil and serve in my double handled soup bowls!  The recipe caught my eye the first time I saw it in the Williams Sonoma catalog, and then it preyed upon my culinary musings over the course of the next 13 or so holiday issues that I received until I was finally forced to find it online and print it.  It was excellent, and until you add the bread cubes and grated gruyere it's amazingly not that bad for you!  A smidgen of oil to caramelize the onions and then soften the remaining mirepoix ingredients and cook the mushrooms, some chicken stock (or in my case, vegetable stock fortified with a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce), and a little Marsala wine.  That's basically it.

Maybe the best part?  Even though I went to extreme measures to get this soup into its pureed form before my kids could see that there were dreaded mushrooms in it, I then carelessly left the recipe on the table where my daughter could find it, and...  she still liked it!  Jack too - he was surprised at how filling and satisfying it was since it had no meat in it.   Actually - this was the best part:

Nat: "Jack, guess what kind of mushrooms are in the soup?"  

Jack: "Psilocybin?!"

Nat: "No, dude, Cremini!"

The same day that I whipped up the soup I was also working on birthday cupcakes for my boss's 50th Birthday Lunch the following day.  I was worried about my contribution since a number of the other guests were also making cupcakes.  Oh yeah, and with one other exception, they're all professionally trained chefs.  As is my boss.  Great.  No pressure whatsoever.

After hearing some of the water cooler talk of caramel banana, gingerbread with lemon marmalade cream cheese frosting, and chocolate chipotle cupcakes (dusted with edible gold, thank you), I knew I had to come up with something pretty unusual.  And pretty fabulous.  I had an idea, I just had no idea if a recipe existed.  All I can say now is thank god for the worldwide internets because it led me to this recipe.  It had everything I wanted:  lavender, a filling, and a cream cheese frosting with a twist.  As it turned out, it was also the most elaborate recipe I have ever used to make cupcakes and it took me all afternoon.

First, you make the lavender simple syrup:

Then you bake.  Since I knew I wanted every bite of these cupcakes to taste of lavender, I decided to add that to the batter, in addition to the lavender cream filling that went into them, though the recipe didn't call for it.  I did that by measuring out the required quantity of sugar and putting it into my food processor with a tablespoon of dried lavender blossoms and giving it a whir until the blossoms were broken up into tiny specs.  Then I proceeded to make the batter using that sugar.  I baked the cupcakes and scooped little divots in each with my melon baller:

Next came the lavender cream filling - nothing more than whipping cream and the simple syrup I'd made earlier that morning, whipped together until stiff peaks formed.  A small dollop went into each cavity, then I trimmed a little off of the scooped out cupcake and tapped it back into place:

The last step was the frosting - citrus cream cheese that allowed me to use whatever citrus I had on hand.  I happened to have Meyer lemons, limes and blood oranges, so I used the zest of all three and juice from one of the lemons.

The end result was nothing short of fabulous.  They more than held their own against the likes of those mentioned above plus others such as pecan pie filled espresso cupcakes, salted caramel filled chocolate cupcakes and, yes, bacon chocolate cupcakes.  Jack said he thinks it's the best cupcake he's ever eaten.  Whoa.