Virtual Great American Bake Sale Update

Just a reminder that the Virtual Great American Bake Sale is still going on. You can get all the details on my previous post here. As of last week $334 had been raised for Share Our Strength. These funds are typically used in the community where the bake sale is held. Since participants in this bake sale are from all over, Kate of Cooking During Stolen Moments, the coordinator of the virtual sale, has asked that the funds from this sale be used wherever the need is greatest.

The ebooks have all been re-uploaded and now include a foreword written by Food Network's Sandra Lee, who is also the national spokesperson for the Great American Bake Sale. Additionally, Sandra Lee has asked if we would consider asking people to subscribe to her new magazine. In return, Sandra will friend any new subscribers on Facebook.

That's it for this update. If you haven't purchased your copy of the ebook yet, head over there now. There are lots of great recipes and it helps support a good cause.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

This week the Ultimate Recipe Swap over at Life As Mom is having a favorite cookie theme. Lately our favorite cookie is White Chocolate Macadamia Nut. I found this recipe awhile ago on the Cooks Recipes site. These cookies are delicious. The first time I made these they disappeared in two days. Hubby keeps asking me to make them again too.

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 (12-ounce) package or 2 cups white chocolate chips
• 1 to 2 cups macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 375*F (190*C).

In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

In large mixing bowl, with an electric mixer at medium speed, cream together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Gently stir in flour mixture until just combined. Fold in the white chocolate and macadamia nuts.

Drop cookies by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a non-stick cookie sheet (or lined with parchment paper) about 1-inch apart.

Bake for 9 to 12 minutes or until lightly golden, turning cookie sheet around after 5 minutes to ensure even browning.

Transfer cookies to a wire rack and cool completely. Store in airtight container.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

For more delicious cookie recipes, head over to the Ultimate Recipe Swap Cookie Edition at Life As Mom. And if you like finding new recipes, don't forget about the Virtual Great American Bake Sale.

The Virtual Great American Bake Sale

I previously posted about the Virtual Great American Bake Sale. Well, it’s now going on and you can get copies of the ebooks for a donation to Share Our Strength. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of these ebooks will go toward Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale program. Funds raised through Great American Bake Sale are donated to after-school and summer feeding programs--food programs that many kids depend on when school is not in session.

The Great American Bake Sale is a program of Share Our Strength, a national organization working to make sure no kid in America grows up hungry. The ebooks are a compilation of recipes from submitters across the blogosphere and beyond. The ebooks are available for purchase based on any donation amount of the buyer's choosing.

Kate over at Stolen Moments Cooking has done a wonderful job putting together these ebooks and coordinating the Virtual Great American Bake Sale. So don’t forget to head over to her post on the Virtual Great American Bake Sale. There you will find links to all the blogs that submitted recipes for the sale. And while you’re there, check out some of her recipes. The ones I have tried have been delicious.

The recipe I submitted for the Virtual Great American Bake Sale was my Banana Cake with Banana Icing. This is one that is a favorite in my family. It is also a very banana-y cake. Yum!

Following is the information on the Virtual Great American Bake Sale from Kate. Please note that all of this information and the links have come directly from her.

The Complete 2009 VGABS Recipes Ebook

Features all 170 of the submitted recipes. Many of the recipes include pictures.

On the checkout page, manually change the amount (USD) field to your donation amount.


Shopping cart courtesy of E-Junkie.

Because we know file size may be an issue for some, the below ebooks have split the 170 recipes into 4 categorized ebooks so that you can choose just 1 or 2 of your favorites, if you'd prefer. Just like for the Complete ebook, many of these recipes include pictures. And again, they are available for purchase based on any donation amount of the buyer's choosing.

Muffins & Breads

Features 24 recipes.

On the checkout page, manually change the amount (USD) field to your donation amount.

Cookies, Candy, Cakes, Bars & Brownies

Features 50 recipes.

On the checkout page, manually change the amount (USD) field to your donation amount.

Desserts

Features 49 recipes.

On the checkout page, manually change the amount (USD) field to your donation amount.

Beyond Baked Goods (Appetizers, Breakfast, Main Dishes, etc.)

Features 47 recipes.

On the checkout page, manually change the amount (USD) field to your donation amount.

Virtual Great American Bake Sale

Stolen Moments Cooking is hosting a Virtual Great American Bake Sale to benefit Share Our Strength and their work to end childhood hunger. If you would like to submit a recipe, you have until April 5th. The ebook will go on sale April 13th. All proceeds from the sale of the ebook will go to Share Our Strength.

I've submitted a recipe already and I'll admit that I'm looking forward to checking out the ebook to see what other yummy recipes will be in there. For more information, head over to Stolen Moments Cooking.

Top 10 Cookie Recipes I Want to Try

Ok, by now we all know that I love to bake and that I'm always looking for fun new recipes to try. So for my first Top 10 Tuesday I figured what better to post about about then recipes. And since I've been surfing around looking for a good Snickerdoodle recipe (see the one I found below) that led me to the list of cookie recipes I want to try.

So here it is, the list of the top 10 cookie recipes I want to try:

1. Snickerdoodles
2. Lavender Cookies
3. Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
4. Iced Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies
5. Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies
6. Mom's Island Treasures
7. Best Ever Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
8. Pecan Squares
9. Berry Shortbread Dreams
10. Oatmeal Lace Cookies

For more Top 10 Tuesday Lists, head over to Oh Amanda.

Weekend Baking - Butter, Cupcakes and Scones Oh My

I have been thinking about making my own butter for a few weeks now. Well, this weekend and went ahead and tried it. I was surprised at just how easy it was.

To make the butter I simply poured some of the whipping cream into my food processor, added a dash of salt (optional) and let the food processor run until the butter and the buttermilk separated. It took around 4 minutes. I had to do the quart in two batches because of the size of my food processor, but that was nothing.

Once the butter and buttermilk separate, pull the butter out with your hands, squeeze it and rinse it off in cold water. This gets the buttermilk completely off the butter. If you leave the buttermilk on there, the butter can spoil. Pour your buttermilk into a container and store it in the fridge or use it in a recipe. I used some of mine to make Chocolate-Buttermilk Cupcakes and will use the rest to make Buttermilk Pancakes later this week.

I also made the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies again this weekend. This time I copped the macadamia nuts up finer so that Pumpkin could have some. They were still good, but I like them better with larger chunks of nuts.

And, since I am still addicted to scones, I made the Starbucks Style Vanilla Scones again. I think these are even better then the ones at Starbucks since they aren't as dry and crumbly. Yum!

Did you bake anything this weekend? If so I would love to hear about it. Just leave me a comment and let me know what you made.

Chocolate-Buttermilk Cupcakes

Thursday I posted a list of 13 cupcakes I want to make. Well, today I decided to make the Chocolate-Buttermilk Cupcakes with Light Cream Cheese Frosting. The recipe is from Martha Stewart's web page.

I decided to go ahead and let Pumpkin have one after she ate her lunch. She enjoyed it very much. So much so that she had to have a bath after eating her cupcake. You can get a glimpse of how she looked and how much she enjoyed it in the embedded video.



Hubby couldn't resist taking this video of her because she got so into her cupcake. This is the first time I'm putting a video on my blog, but I have to say that it's fun. I think I will be trying this again. Next time I hope to have something a little more exciting for you though. Are there any topics you would like to see a video on?

I also did some other baking this weekend and even made some of my own butter. I will post more on that later this weekend. Did you do any baking this weekend? If so let us know what you made and post a link to the recipe if you have it.

13 Cupcakes I Want to Make

Yesterday the new issue of Martha Stewart Living arrived in my mailbox. This morning I was flipping through it and came across a recipe I wanted to try. The magazine referred you to their website and the next thing I knew I got sucked in to viewing all these yummy treats in the Martha Stewart recipe collection. While I was there I found 10 cupcake recipes that I want to try. I make cupcakes or muffins pretty much every weekend so I was excited to find some new recipes to try. Of course since this is Thursday Thirteen I had to add three more cupcake recipes to make this post come up with 13.

I still haven't selected a cupcake recipe for this weekend so I'm open to suggestions. Which one would you make first? Or do you have any good cupcake or muffin recipes to share? Let me know, I love trying new recipes.

Here are the 13 cupcake recipes:

1. Sprinkles' Strawberry Cupcakes (pictured)
2. Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (this is the one that led me to the website)
3. Apple Cupcakes
4. Pumpkin Patch Cupcakes (hey, there's a reason we call our daughter Pumpkin)
5. Frosted Chocolate-Buttermilk Cupcakes
6. Banana Cupcakes with Honey-Cinnamon Frosting
7. Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream
8. Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes
9. Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting and Jelly
10. Coconut Cupcakes with Seven-Minute Frosting and Coconut Flakes
11. Red Velvet Cupcakes
12. Pineapple Coconut Cupcakes
13. Killer Cupcakes

For more Thursday Thirteen, head over to Happy To Be At Home.

Saturday Baking - Cookies & Muffins

Hubby had been craving White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies and all of his talking about it got me craving them too. So this weekend I wound up making some.

I had forgotten just how expensive macadamia nuts are. From now on I will watch for a sale. These cookies were so delicious that I will definitely be making them again. The only change I made was to use chopped up white chocolate instead of white chocolate chips. This saved me from having to buy the chips. I already had the wafers at home.

We had some VERY ripe bananas that I needed to use up so I also made some Banana Muffins. This recipe came from the Miracle Muffins: Amazingly Delicious Treats Without All That Fat
cookbook by Patty Neeley. I know, I actually used one of the cookbooks that has been sitting on my shelf neglected for years. Anyway, my daughter has already had one of these and loved it. I tried a little section of one and it was pretty good.

The Miracle Muffins cookbook had several recipes in it that looked really good. I plan to try some of them out in the coming weeks. As I try them out I will let you know how they turn out.

This post is being linked to Tasty Tuesday, so head over there if you're looking for more yummy recipes.

Meatloaf Parmesan

This week I had some ground beef to use up. Lately I've seen a few recipes for different flavored meatloaves. They inspired me to try a meatloaf parmesan. Since hubby loves meatloaf and it had been awhile since I made one, he was willing to be my guinea pig.

This is the first time I have experimented with a flavored meatloaf. Mainly because I was never a big meatloaf person. However, since I have been finding interesting meatloaf recipes that I liked, I decided to go ahead and try coming up with one of my own. I'm known for experimenting with dinner so that was certainly not a new thing for my family.

To make the meatloaf I mixed the following:

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 cup oatmeal (quick, not old fashioned)
• 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
• 1 cup spaghetti sauce
• 1 egg

Combine all the above ingredients until everything is well mixed. Then spread half the meat mixture into the bottom of a loaf pan and slightly up the sides. For the "Parmesan" filling I used string cheese. I used this mainly because it was what I had on hand and it needed to be used up. You could try this with other cheeses. See the picture at left for how I squished the cheese in there. Once the cheese was in I topped the meatloaf off with the rest of the meat mixture.

Cook meatloaf at 350 for about an hour. I used a thermometer so I just cooked until the internal temperature reached 170.

When serving the meatloaf I topped each slice with a bit of warmed up spaghetti sauce.

Hubby and I both thought this meatloaf was delicious. We will definitely be making it again. Although knowing me I will wind up modifying it somehow next time I cook it. I just can't seem to cook following a recipe. It goes against my nature.

For more Tackle It Tuesday - head over to 5 Minutes For Mom.
For more Talk About It Tuesday - head over to Lazy Organizer.
For more Tempt My Tummy Tuesday - head over to Blessed With Grace
For more Tasty Tuesday - head over to Forever..Wherever
Also posted to Blissfully Domestic
And posted to Kitchen Tip Tuesday

A Whole Lot of Muffins

This weekend I picked up a cool new muffin pan at Williams-Sonoma. It gives you bug muffins. Since I've been making muffins for my daughter just about every weekend I thought she would love to see some bug muffins.

For my first use of the new pan I decided to make Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins. My daughter had these at Thanksgiving when someone else made them. She loves pumpkin so it seemed like a good choice. These muffins are delicious. They also have a crumb topping (actually on the bottom with these muffins). This recipe will definitely be going into my book for future baking sessions.

Safeway had a great deal going on for Post Raisin Bran this week. Since I picked up a few boxes I decided to go ahead and make some bran muffins. I absolutely love bran muffins. As you can tell by my picture I couldn't even get a picture taken without taking a bite. They are delicious. The batter for this recipe is also supposed to last for 6 weeks in the fridge. I say supposed to because it has never lasted that long around here. We always use it up way before 6 weeks.

Here is the recipe for Raisin Bran Muffins:

15 oz. Raisin Bran cereal
2 cups Sugar
2 tsp. Salt
5 cups Flour
5 tsp. Baking Soda
4 Eggs
1 qt. Buttermilk
1 cup Oil

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix first 5 ingredients in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl mix together eggs, buttermilk and oil. Add liquid mixture to dry mixture. You must mix this by hand. Fill muffin pans. Bake 15 - 20 minutes. Store any remaining batter covered in the refrigerator. Batter should last 6 weeks in refrigerator.

I would like to note that Post really skimps on the raisins in their Raisin Bran. When I pull the batter out to make the rest of the muffins I will definitely be adding more raisins to it. These muffins are delicious warm with a little bit of butter. Yum!

Saturday Baking - Carrot Cake and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

This evening I am exhausted after a day full of shopping, baking and cleaning. This morning I hit two different grocery stores to take advantage of their sales and coupons. (I will post more on that tomorrow). Then this afternoon I did my usual Saturday baking and of course I had to clean the house. So now I am exhausted and ready to curl up with a good book, but first, more about my baking.

Friday night hubby picked up some oatmeal raising cookies for pumpkin. Well, they were left unattended and the dogs got them. Since she already knew about the cookies (but not the dogs eating them) I wound up having to make some oatmeal raising cookies today. My all time favorite recipe for these is the Quaker Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies recipe. You can also find it inside the lid of Quaker oatmeal. The cookies turned out just as yummy as they always do and are quickly vanishing from the kitchen.

For the last few weeks I have been trying to make a carrot cake and this weekend I finally decided to go ahead and do it. I decided to try this recipe since it had good ratings on Allrecipes. I also wound up making cupcakes instead of an actual cake. Pumpkin loves cupcakes so most cake like items get made into cupcakes anymore. Anyway, I have to say that I wasn't crazy about this recipe and will have to try another one next time. The recipe isn't bad, but it just seemed really bland to me. Now I did leave out the pecans since my daughter will be eating them, but I don't really think the pecans would have made much difference. So does anyone have a good carrot cake recipe they would like to recommend? Since we all LOVE carrot cake I really would like to find a good recipe.

Recipe Organization

I have been doing well with cleaning out my cookbooks and getting rid of the ones I haven't been using. However, the recipes I find online that I want to try seem to growing in the night. I was bookmarking them in my Google Bookmarks, but that list was getting a bit long and unwieldy. Thankfully tonight I came this post over at Simple Mom. She talks about using del.icio.us to organize your online recipe links. I like what she had to say and it really seems like it's going to work for me. So I went over and created an account at del.icio.us and I am moving my recipe bookmarks over there. Simple Mom has step by step instructions for this so, if you are interested, check out her article. As you know, I'm always looking for ways to keep things organized. Plus this is a great way to share the good recipes you come across.

If you want to check out the recipes I've bookmarked, you can see them here. For now I just plan to bookmark my recipes at del.icio.us. What ideas do you have for organizing your recipes? If you use del.icio.us, what other stuff do you bookmark?

Saturday Baking - Vanilla Scones & Pumpkin Cookies

I absolutely love Starbucks petite vanilla scones. However, I don't like paying $1.95 for three mini scones. So I decided to try making some myself. So I found this recipe and made went ahead and made them. The only modification I made was to add 1 teaspoon of vanilla to glaze and use milk instead of water for the glaze.

As you can see by my picture. I couldn't wait to try them. Oh my goodness, they were so delicious. I had to walk away from them so that I wouldn't eat them all. I personally think these are even better then the ones at Starbucks because they don't crumble when you look at them. My daughter and dogs also loved these. Since they have all also had the Starbucks version I figured it was only fair to let them have a small taste of these too.

The second thing I made Saturday was Pumpkin Cookies with brown sugar frosting. I printed this recipe out way back in October because I figured my daughter would love them. She has a serious thing for pumpkin. Anyway, I finally got around to making them. They are absolutely delicious. My daughter loves them too. I think the smell of them baking woke her up from her nap. I will say that she likes them better without the frosting, but I think that's because the frosting was still gooey and stuck to her fingers. I personally liked them with the frosting.

This weekend baking thing is getting to be a habit and I have to say that I like it. It is so much fun trying out new recipes and spending time in my kitchen. My daughter loves the fresh baked goodies too. Of course hubby wants chocolate chip cookies every weekend. Can you tell what his favorite is? Since I made them last week I decided not to this week. Maybe if he's good I'll make him some next weekend.

Homemade Condiments Anyone?

I have started to consider making some of my own condiments. Specifically ketchup and chocolate syrup. Yes, I realize that is a strange combination.

It all started with the ketchup. As I've mentioned before I'm trying to eliminate high fructose corn syrup from our diet. Well, my beloved Heinz ketchup has high fructose corn syrup. Since it is the only ketchup I will eat, my only options are to either give up ketchup or try making some myself. So I looked around for a ketchup recipe and I found this one. It doesn't seem very hard and the recipe does have good reviews.

When I told my husband about my intention to try making ketchup, he was not thrilled. Now, to be fair, his issue with it is time; specifically, when will I find time to make things like ketchup (which we can buy cheap) when my schedule is already overly full? I figure I can whip up a batch Saturday when I do my baking. I plan to try this weekend and see how it goes. Am I being overly optimistic? Possibly.

The idea for the chocolate syrup came about this morning because of the yogurt. My daughter likes my vanilla yogurt, but she doesn’t care for the mango yogurt I made her. So hubby suggested making some chocolate yogurt using chocolate syrup. I found a recipe for chocolate syrup here. Again, it sounds easy, but I don’t know how much we would use it. We just don’t use a lot of chocolate syrup around here. I have all the ingredients, so I am tempted to try it this weekend if time allows.

So, is it too much? I feel like we would be getting a much better quality food product with a little bit of effort from myself. Really, I just want my family to be able to eat good quality food without all the additives and crazy chemicals that you find in packaged food anymore. When I make it myself I know what’s in there and we can adjust the taste to our preferences. But is the time I spend working on things like this instead of spending time with my daughter really worth it? I already feel like I get so little time with her; yet I also value her health and I hate feeding her foods with all those chemicals and additives in them. There is no clear answer here. For now I’m just trying to find that balance that works for us and hoping I don’t drive us all crazy in the mean time.

Saturday Baking - Strawberry Muffins

This weekend I decided to bake a little something special for Valentines Day. When I came across this recipe, I knew that I had found that treat. This recipe is for a simple white cake and strawberry icing. I decided to make this as cupcakes since my daughter absolutely loves cupcakes.

To me, these cupcakes tasted like little strawberry shortcakes. I would consider the cake more of a shortcake then a white cake. Either way, it was delicious. I served these with extra sliced fresh strawberries and whipped cream on the side. They were so good that I plan to make these again when our local strawberries come in this spring. Yummy!

Saturday Baking - Banana Cake

This weekend I decided to make a banana cake with banana icing. This is an old recipe so I'm not sure where it came from originally. My dad loves these cakes and it's been a few years since he had one so I think he was very happy when I took one over for breakfast today. Yes, we had banana cake for breakfast. And it was good. We did have other good breakfast foods too (Thanks Mom!)

This cake is supposed to be a layer cake. Since I didn't have the right pans to make a layer cake I just used a regular 9x13 pan and iced it as one layer. You could cut this in half and still make a layer cake though. (Mom gets the credit for realizing that).

This cake is definitely banana flavored. We all love it though. Even my daughter who was allowed to have some with her breakfast. It does count as a fruit, right?

Anyway, here's the recipe:

Banana Layer Cake

• 1 ½ C sugar
• ¾ C butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 2 ½ C flour
• ½ t baking powder
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 ¼ C ripe banana (force through ricer than measure)
• ¼ C milk
• 1 t baking soda
• ¼ t salt

Sift flour and baking powder 3 times and set aside. Cream butter, add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy. Add beaten eggs and vanilla. Add milk to bananas and baking soda. Add banana mixture and flour mixture to the butter and sugar mixture alternately, beginning with flour. Bake in oven about 375°F for 30 minutes.

Banana Icing

• 1/8 lb. Butter melted
• 1 banana through ricer
• 1 lb. 10X sugar
• ½ t vanilla

Beat all ingredients together until creamy. Ice cake once it is completely cool. Keep cake tightly covered to prevent browning of icing.

Notes: I don't have a potato ricer so I just mashed the bananas and that worked fine with this recipe. I also used whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour and you could not tell. The bananas are the taste you notice in this cake. I also don't have a sifter so I just let my mixer mix the flour and baking powder for a bit.

Back to Baking

This weekend I got a chance to do some baking for the first time in months. It felt so good to be back in the kitchen baking. I love cooking and baking, but I just haven't been finding time for anything but the basics since my daughter joined us. Well, I decided to make these Morning Glory Muffins on Saturday. I was completely shocked to discover that we were out of raisins, so I substituted dried cranberries. I also switched the amounts for the white and wheat flour. Other then that, I left the recipe as is.

Please note that this recipe makes 4 dozen muffins. You're supposed to be able to freeze them, but my freezer is full so that is not an option for us. These muffins are addictively delicious. So I had to get some of them out of the house, otherwise my daughter and I would wind up eating them all ourselves. You can see in the picture that some of them had already disappeared. Anyway, I took some to my parents, some to work and my hubby took some to work too. So far everyone I know of has loved them. I definitely recommend this recipe, just remember - Addictively Delicious!

I had so much fun baking again that I plan to bake some more this coming weekend. It's nice to have a homemade treat and it much more economical then buying premade treats. Not to mention healthier since I control the ingredients. No trans fats in this house.

Jewish Apple Cake Recipe

A recipe for Jewish Apple cake to help you take advantage of all the good deals on apples you can find this time of year. For even more apple recipes, check out Life As Mom's Apple Recipe Swap.

Jewish Apple Cake Recipe

First peel and cut 5-6 apples in chunks about the size of a thimble. Sprinkle in 2 tsp. of cinnamon and 5 tbsp. of sugar. Set aside.

Into a large bowl measure:
3 C Flour
1/4 C Orange Juice
2 C Sugar
3 tsp Baking powder
1 C Cooking oil (I use olive oil)
2 1/2 tsp Vanilla
4 Eggs
1 tsp Salt

Beat these ingredients together until smooth and pour half the batter into a large greased tube cake pan. Arrange half the apple mixture over it. Pour in remaining batter and top with rest of apple mixture.

Place in preheated 350 oven and bake about 90 minutes until done. Remove from pan, let stand on rack to cool.

This recipe is a family favorite. My father has actually been asking for it so I guess I'm going to have to make one soon too.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup Recipe

This is a very quick and easy recipe for Broccoli Cheddar soup. I love this soup, but don't have a lot of time to spend making it. This is what works for me and I love it.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. Broccoli, steamed
• 8 oz. Cheddar Cheese, shredded
• 1 carton Chicken Stock (I use Progresso)

Directions:

• Once broccoli is steamed, place in food processor with some chicken stock and puree. Add as much chicken stock as necessary to get the broccoli to puree. You may need to puree the broccoli in multiple batches.
• Place pureed broccoli in a pot and bring to simmer. Add shredded cheddar cheese.

You can serve the soup once the cheese is melted and the soup is nice and hot, but I prefer to cook it a day ahead of time and reheat it the next night. That gives the flavors a chance to mix together. Yummy!

Sometimes I like to top my bowl of broccoli cheddar soup with a little extra shredded cheese and some bacon.