New Soup Recipe

So last night I made a soup for a dinner I went to. I wasn't positive it would be liked, but everyone seemed to like it. They said that it tasted like a pumpkin pie!

I kind of made up the recipe, so I'm going to try and write down what I remember about it... :)

Take two medium Butternut squashes. Peel them and then cut them in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds, and then rub them with oil on both sides and place them on an oiled baking sheet. Sprinkle them with a little bit of sugar, and salt, and cover with foil, sealing the edges on to the baking sheet. Bake for about an hour and a half at 325 degrees, until it's fork tender. Then pull off the foil and let it bake for another 15-20 minutes to give the outside a bit of a carmelization.

Let the squash sit and cool down for about 10 minutes. Then in batches puree it in the blender. I did two batches- so there was one whole squash in the blender at a time. Add a little bit of liquid to help it blend. I had some vegetable stock and added that at first, and used about 1 cup of it. Then I ran out of vegetable stock and used about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of Apple juice with the second squash.

Pour the puree'd squash into a pot and turn the stove onto a low heat. I then added about 1 cup of half and half, 1 tsp of cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp of nutmeg, and about 1/4 tsp of salt. I wanted it to have a little bit of sweetness to it so I added about 1/4 cup of sugar. Then to give it a little more wintery sweetness, I added 1/4 cup of brown sugar. It seemed a little thick still so I added about 1 1/2 cups of milk to the soup. I then let it simmer for about 2 hours.

When I came back to it it was still very thick. I added about 2 cups of water to it and let it simmer for another hour.

When I came back to it this time, the consistency was fine, but the spices and the sweetness seemed a little bit too heavy. I added about 1 cup of plain unflavored yogurt to it, and it gave a tiny bit of a tartness to it that cut the spices and sweetness. (in the future I might just not put as much sugar and spices in, but this worked well this time).

Then I just let it continue to simmer until I packed it up and took it to the dinner.