firsts, other bakes and another soup

been sort of ailing lately therefore had time to sort out pics, plus cook and bake. i think that in my first entry i promised a pic of the frosted cake for the certain someone's b'day. here is, used the the frosting mentioned on alexis's blog on oct 26 -08




now you're going to think i'm all freaked about alexis 'cause here is another by her, chocolate chip cookies




one would think to take pics of the finished product, but i forgot, honestly. and then they were gone. mine came out chunkier than the ones in the pic of the link





here is a first, angel food cake from martha stewart's baking handbook

first time i ever had angel food cake was in saginaw, MI, in the 80s, made by my friend marie's mom. somehow it tasted so good, at that time i had never even heard of angel food. it took me years to find a recipe, then it took years to find cream of tartar, no one in finland knew what it was and it was always the one thing that i forgot to buy on my trips to US. then it took years and many trips to US to find an angel food cake pan. so you better believe i had great expectations for this cake!





almost couldn't get over on how many egg whites were needed...





as you can see, finished version took to looping a bit, but it tasted great, with red currant jam. not as good as marie's mom, but maybe 20 odd years had done their magic...





i used to have a great recipe for veggie lasagna that i got from a swedish magazine (forgot which one) years ago. it had aubergines, spinach, kalamata olives and the usual tomatoes and cheese in it. i tried recreating the recipe, ended up adding some zucchini





did remember that the aubergine needed to be sliced very thinly, or prebaked. thought it would be easier to mandoline them




first a layer of tomato sauce (canned tomatoes, chopped onions, basil, pepper, simmer to a thick sauce), lasagna sheets, some more tomato sauce, julienned zucchini, spinach and cream (just mix thawed spinach with low fat cooking cream, season with some nutmeg), sliced aubergines, mozzarella cheese, and some kalamata olives as well. the olives were the only salty ingredient, to my taste that was enough





forgot in which order i put the ingredients in but the lasagna turned out ok. maybe time had done the trick again because this wasn't as good i had hoped it would be, perhaps zucchini wasn't a brilliant idea. definitely need to work on this, or just keep digging my recipe archives for the "perfect" veggie lasagna





another first, yeast dough belgian waffles. i have used my waffle iron / sandwich grill to make waffles before but always used dough that had baking powder in it. now this is weird, i had great yeast dough waffles at marie's house in holland, MI, years ago. (really hadn't thought of getting all these michigan memories into one blog entry...)





never got the recipe, even bought a belgian cookbook (in french! which i don't read fluently) to get a good one for yeast dough. looks like i need to keep looking further because, althoug very tasty, these did not have the consistency i was looking for. very good for sunday breakfast with maple syrup, though





sunday lunch was chicken soup with curry. had some home made chicken stock in the freezer, used that as a base for the soup. chicken came from the freezer as well. i think i should take some pics on my pantry (at the shack, that is) for you to understand what i actually happen to have. certain someone has told me, well more than once, to use up whatever there is in the pantry before buying new stuff. i feel, however, that one needs to be prepared! this is not just my idea...





thought of using the mandoline to get smaller pieces of the veggies (celeriac, parsnip, carrot, celery and leek) to reduce the cooking time. if you have a mandolin, it pays to read the instructions, don't do what i did. and yes, i know i need a manicure




used approx one liter of stock, added another liter or so of water. 2 chicken breasts cut up to bite size pieces, bring the stock and water to a boil, add chicken. i usually start by adding celeriac, cook that for 5 mins, then carrots and celery, cook for 5 mins, add parsnip cook and cook for 15 mins. i had 2 bay leaves in, added some chili powder and curry paste at the end to season the soup. chile and curry powder added a nice indian kick to the soup




some parsley, also from freezer, as a final touch