Soups and Cakes

Today was a busy day for baking and cooking, I made a 'Red velvet' chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and two soups!

I made a basic chocolate cake, sliced it in half and while it was cooling, I made Italian meringue and cream cheese frosting. I used Whisk Kid's cream cheese frosting recipe and modified it to make Italian style buttercream as opposed to Swiss, which is a lot heavier and not so popular in my house, and slathered it on (smooth, fluffy deliciousness!) I then grated a piece of 70% Cocoa Lindt over the top.

Lets just say it went down rather well :p

(My iphone sort of killed the colours)

After dinner I decided to start on my soups, the first is a basic 'everything' soup so, onion, cabbage, carrot, parsnip, swede, celery, bacon bits and the leftover roast lamb, pumpkin, parsnip, potato and sweet potato from dinner as well as a litre and a half of chicken stock, large pinch of salt and lots of black pepper.

I am also making Ham stock for another soup. I got the massive stock pot and placed two massive ham hocks, 6 onions (in halves), 5 cloves of garlic, two huge pieces of celery, a carrot, a bayleaf and a sprinkling of black pepper corns and then overed it all with water. This is simmer gently for most of the night and I will strain and concentrate it tomorrow. :)

So much food! I am loving being back home!