Thai Green Cauliflower Soup

A pile of filled tupperware makes me happy.

"The diet starts Monday.."

But the meal prep begins Sunday night!

So, we all know of my vegetable woes.  I don't like them, as a group. I particularly hate cauliflower. It's a terrible substitute for rice and for mashed potatoes. It's just not starchy carby delicious and that's ok. It is its own thing.

Cauliflower can shine on its own without being something else. My boyfriend and I were on holiday in Croatia last year and found a little place with the most delicious food. Their fish was a revelation, but in particular the soup was the best soup I've ever had. It was like a veggie Thai green curry, and the thing that surprised me the most was that it had cauliflower in it. Delicious, healthy and silky-smooth with lovely background spice. 

Blending that veg up in a soup transforms it and it becomes magic.

Gold star for cauliflower.

Prinsesstårta

BEHOLD THE MAJESTY

It is my lovely Swedish boyfriend’s birthday today. A few months ago he casually mentioned that he really liked the traditional Swedish cake “Prinsesstårta” and how he hadn’t had one in years. You may know the cake from a Great British Bake Off technical challenge.

Not being one to shy away from a baking challenge, I decided I would have a good go at it as a birthday surprise.

I was nervous about this for a whole week  leading up to making it. And, just for an added level of technical difficulty, I decided to not practice any of this beforehand and just make it all on the day of his birthday dinner. I have never made crème pat before, I have never coloured marzipan before and I have never covered a cake in anything but buttercream or ganache before. I don’t recommend making this cake with all those firsts in one go, but luckily it worked out fine!

Instagram pic!

Tips to help get you through it:

• Just use jam from a jar - for the small amount needed, making it from scratch feels pointless
• Make sure to whip the cream until stiff peaks so that it holds the dome shape
• Again, chill for a good hour in the fridge with the cream on to again help that dome stay formed
• Youtube is a great resource for making those damn roses!
• I’m terrible at cutting a cake into horizontal layers so I went non-traditional and used three cake tins and baked the layers separately
• Don’t bother buying fondant for just the rose, use some of the marzipan instead
• You could easily make the crème pat the day before, and probably the marzipan too

Amounts wise, I probably ended up with a little too much crème pat and a little too much marzipan – could probably have made a smaller second cake with the extras!

Phone photo of the inside

The cake itself was a revelation to me - perfect amount of sweetness, with a light sponge, and ridiculously ornate. Winner!

Green Soup

Healthy eating is really hard and I totally fell off the wagon big style. Like, from Christmas. It’s now summer. That’s not good. So this seems as good a time as any to try to get back on it while getting the blog back up to regular updates!

I have been trying to think of ways to get more vegetables into my diet because I am quite immature in my vegetable tastes. I will happily eat sweetcorn and peas and carrots, but I really struggle with things like aubergine and spinach and cucumber. And I just point blank refuse to eat a green shake.

But I have an ace up my sleeve. Soup! I really like soup. It’s quick to make, you can throw a whole host of veggies in it and the best part is you can hide the veggies by blitzing the whole thing up to make a smooth and creamy lunch.

I find it easiest to make changes for my lunches. Gone are the sandwiches and crackers, behold the era of soup! For this soup, I knew I wanted to have the main part be broccoli, and the rest I just kind of threw in based on what I like and what was in the cupboard.