Irish Cooking Day

With the cold temps outside, lately I just want to curl up on the couch with a hot bowl of soup. Canned soups are alright when you don't have time to make soup from scratch. Since I had some extra time I thought I'd make some potato soup the best way possible: the Irish way! And of course some soda bread would be much need to accompany the soup.

One of my favorite parts of being in Ireland is having fresh bread with every meal! Sure, it goes straight to the hips but its not every day that you get to enjoy fresh bread! At least it is very rare for me! I've never attempted to make either potato soup or soda bread from scratch so I did some cook book research and perused around pinterest a little to find these recipes.

3 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup sugar

2tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

4 tbsp butter

1 and 1/2 cup plain yogurt

Mix dry ingredients, cut in butter until pieces are pea size, mix in yogurt. Turn out dough and knead into a disc shape. Cut an X in the loaf and bake 40-50 mins on 350 degrees

Irish soda bread. The yogurt in the bread made it extremely dense and chewy but overall it had good flavor. While mixing my dough I added a few tablespoons of water because the yogurt wasn't quite moist enough for all of the dry ingredients. Be careful with this though because the dough can get too gooey really fast! I also made one disc out of the entire amount of dough and had trouble getting the bread to cook completely through so it might be wiser to try two loaves and keep an eye on them while cooking (maybe 25-30mins)

Soup Recipe

 Making my grocery list for the soup ingredients I must have read the chicken broth part incorrectly. I ended up with approximately half of the required amount. This actually worked out okay. I ended up with a very thick and creamy soup which I found delicious
 The only down side is that it barely rendered two servings which was disappointing because I was hoping for leftovers!

While throwing on clothes in the morning I all that was on my mind was my meal planned for the day and as you can see that dominated my wardrobe selection. I also made the mistake of wearing my favorite socks (official Irish dancing) and was forced into a little jig by my photographer.

What's your favorite cultural cuisine? Thursday I'll be taking a trip down memory lane and recapping my Ireland adventure from a few months back. I'll be discussing the do's and don't's and how to pack for a stylish getaway!

P.S. like my oven mitts? You can find them here!

The Aroma of Christmas!

In my family, it is a big holiday tradition to bake a TON of cookies for Christmas. Sometimes we share them with others...sometimes we hoard them to ourselves. BUT either way it's always a day full of flying flour, timers beeping, and the sweeeet aroma of cookies!!

Before we talk cookies lets talk about the very exciting little package I received in the morning before we started our cookie fiasco! I've been stalking the Lily Asher earring collection debating on which pair I need to buy first when I came across an amazing flash deal! I scored three beautiful sets of earrings so naturally I had to wear them right away!

Now I'll admit, I wasn't sure if they would be heavy or anything due to their size but I was so wrong! I've never had a more comfortable pair of earrings! These are definitely a must have! Visit Lily Asher for TONS of gorgeous prints, colors, and sizes!

Our cookies vary year to year but the one we always have to make are the sugar kringles. Now I'd love the share the recipe with all of you so you can experience these magnificent cookies for yourself, but I've been sworn to secrecy regarding the recipe. In fact I haven't even been given the recipe, so I don't know it myself. It's a cookie that my grandma has been handed down
and is now the keeper of the recipe! I can tell you that it involves the dough being rolled out on the counter, cut into little strips, then coated in sugar and baked. These cookies are so light and airy they just melt in your mouth!

I stole a glimpse of the recipe!!

Since I can't give out the sugar kringle recipe I'll give you my other favorite! A shortbread cookies with dried cherries and white chocolate chips, a take on a raspberry shortbread cookie recipe.

We follow the cookie recipe and add half a bag of dried cherries (this year we did a fourth of a bag of cherries and a fourth of cranberries) and half a bag of white chocolate chips (just eyeball it!). The glaze is good on the cookies but we don't typically put it on the cookies, they're fine without it!

My little Christmas helper :)

 Merry Christmas everyone!! and that's a wrap on our baking cookies and Lily Asher earrings!