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Monday, October 09, 2006

Pumpkin soup, anyone?

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Soup, pie, torte...it's all the same thing, isn't it? hehehehe.

Happy belated thanksgiving all - hope everyone had wonderful weekends, replete with tryptophan turkey comas and jugs of delicious gravy!

I had a fun thanksgiving. As luck would have it, I managed to get out of making a turkey dinner at the last minute - we headed up the valley to my in-laws' house. The great part of this was that I got out of making the whole turkey dinner, but silly, silly me decided that I should volunteer myself to provide dessert.

At first, I thought it would just be hubs and myself and the in-laws. But then, the grandparents, an aunt, and SIL/BIL came as well. Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem, but due to laziness on my part, I didn't start the dessert until just after midnight on Saturday morning.

Hubs and I went out for a fab dinner on Friday night - I started with coconut shrimp satay, then butternut squash soup, and then grilled bison with portabello mushrooms and scalloped potatoes. Yumminess. Finished it off with a deliciously decadent espresso. And a whole whack of wine - hubs always insists on ordering a bottle with dinner (no complaints here!), but since he's driving, I always end up with the lion's share. Now, a sane person would have gone home at this point to start dessert. But no! We joined SIL and BIL at a local pub to celebrate BIL's birthday. So of course I had a beer.

After this, we bought groceries (thank goodness for 24 hour grocery stores!) and I got the ingredients to make dessert. How's that for procrastination? Rather than pumpkin pie, I found a recipe for a four-layer pumpkin torte; thought this would make a more impressive addition to the meal. And it did....eventually.

Layer one went smoothly - crushed gingersnaps, melted butter and sugar, pressed into the bottom of a springform pan. Pretty easy, pretty straightforward... :)

Layer two - also a breeze. Cream cheese, sugar and eggs all came together in a rich fluffy mass, and off into the oven for 20 mins.

Still good.

Layer three is where is all fell apart....slightly more complicated than the other layers, this layer involved three different parts. The main part consisted of pumpkin, spices, milk, sugar and egg yolks, cooked on the stove until thickened. By the time I hit this stage, it was already past 1AM. Perhaps it was my impatience or perhaps it was the beer/wine-judgement, but I don't think I let this thicken enough. The second part of this layer was a package of gelatin, dissoved in 1/4 c. water. Pretty sure I dissolved it too early, and then I continued to add more water until it got all granular. hmmmmm....maybe not the best decision. Anyway, the last part of this layer was whipped eggwhites (pretty sure I pulled that off).

After this layer was all mixed together, I wasn't entirely convinced it was going to set up, but poured it on the other two layers none-the-less.

And went off to bed.

When I woke up, the layer was SOUP. Pumpkiny-cinnamony SOUPY disastrous mess. I had a plan B, but I wasn't yet ready to throw in the towel on this labour of love. I racked my brain on what I could possibly do and then just decided to throw the whole mess in the oven. I figured that the gelatin might melt, but hoped that the dubiously-cooked eggs would overcome that issue. After an hour in the oven, the cake wasn't quite solid, but I was running out of time!

I stuck the whole mess in the freezer for another hour and then took it out. It was somewhat softly squishily solid. But the centre was still warm. At this point, I added layer four (cool whip), made it look pretty and dusted with cinnamon. Stuck it back in the freezer, and eventually brought it to the in-laws.

I was quite worried - because people kept saying thigns like "oh, I'm sure it's wonderful).....and I had visions of a massive torte explosion as I lifted off the sides of the springform pan. Somehow, it all stayed together, looked awesome and tasted even better.

I was so relieved. Hubs family is awesome but has a communication network that could rival that of the pentagon. I knew that if it was good, everyone would hear, but I also knew that if it was bad, everyone would hear. (gack - and not in a malicious way - more in a "I just felt so bad for her after all the hard work" kind of way - v. embarrassing).

So all is well in domestic-goddes-land. :)

1 comment:

Ms.Smarties said...

You should have taken a picture of the pumpkin soup!

On an unrelated matter... can you post your spring roll recipe? I lost it :-(

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