Healthy Beet Carrot Tomato Soup

I've been reading about healthy eating from Dr. Sachin Patel and inspired by all the great recipes on his blog, yesterday I was craving veggies and a healthy dinner. My kitchen only had a few veggies available - beets, carrots and onions. But also had vegetable stock and tomato puree. So I searched some soup recipes and took inspiration from several to create this soup that turned out delish!

I had this with baked homemade garlic fries and it was perfect. The beets give a wonderful colour to the soup.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small red onion, chopped
• 1 beet, chopped
• 1/2 cup tomato puree
• 1 vegetable buillion cube
• 1 1/2 cups water (or just 1 1/2 cups of vegetable broth)
• 1 teaspoon oregano seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup whole wheat rigati pasta
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 0.5 cm ginger, grated

Directions

1. Warm the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat
2. Add the carrots, onion, and garlic and saute until onions are transluscent and carrots are soft.
3. Dissolve buillion cube in water to make vegetable broth.
4. Add beets, tomato puree, vegetable broth, pasta, ginger and seasonings. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
5. Simmer for 15 minutes.
6. Serve hot!

Poached Apple Cinnamon Cake (Eggless and Whole Wheat)

After a long hiatus, I baked again and I baked a lot. I wanted to share an awesome new recipe that I tried out – Poached Apple Cinnamon Cake. This cake apparently is the best cake I have ever made.

I modified the recipe for Spiced Pear Cake from Passionate About Baking, who is in turn had gotten the recipe from Food Network Canada.

There are two parts to this cake – the poached apples and cake itself. You can place whole poached apples into the cake, but I cut mine up into quarter slices and spread them around. Next time, I cut an apple into 4 quarters and further slice each quarter into 2 to 3 pieces so that you can get pieces of apple in each bite.

As I am writing this up, I realized that I used WAY less water than was stated in the original recipe for poaching, but it worked out fine!

Next time I am going to try making this without sugar (using honey instead) to make it a sugar-free, vegetarian dessert!

Here is my eggless version:

Poached Apple Cinnamon Cake
Makes 2 – 4 X 8 inch cakes make in a loaf pan

Ingredients

Poached Apples

• 2 medium apples (cut into quarter slices, cut further after poaching)
• Juice of 1 small lemon (mine was a circular lemon about 1.5 inches in diameter)
• 1 cup water (original recipe says 4 cups of water)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick

Cinnamon Cake

• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup ground almonds / walnuts
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 apple puree

Directions:

Poached Apples

1. Peel the apples and slice into quarters.
2. Place the apples in a bowl and sprinkle with lemon juice. Set aside.
3. Place the water, sugar and cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
4. Add the apples and the remaining lemon juice.
5. With the syrup barely simmering, poach the apples until tender, 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Transfer to a plate and let cool to room temperature.
7. Return apples to cooled poaching liquid.

Cinnamon Cake

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly grease and flour pan.
2. In a bowl, combine the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, spices and salt. Set aside.
3. In another bowl, cream the butter with the brown sugar. Add apple puree and mix until smooth.
4. Measure out 1/4 cup of the poaching liquid.
5. Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the poaching liquid.
6. Pour the batter into the pan. Place poached apple pieces in the batter.
7. Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the cake between 2 apples comes out clean.
8. Let cool on a rack and unmould gently.