Recipes to Rival Month 1

Squash soup is what was on the menu this month over on recipes to rival!
The requirements were that we had to make our own stock, something I had never done, use squash, and use a vanilla cream garnish of some sort. I was really excited when I read the challenge because I had been wanting to make squash soup since fall began. This finally gave me the perfect excuse to just do it already! I liked the leniency of this specific challenge because as long as I made my own stock and used a vanilla garnish, i could use whatever squash soup recipe I wanted. I ended up making up my own after reading and getting inspired by other recipes.

I started on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving by making the stock and roasting the squash. I used my two favorite squashes, butternut and acorn. They're so flavorful and naturally sweet.

Once my stock had boiled away for hours and my squash was wonderfully tender, both went into the refrigerator overnight.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving in my family is what we call pie day. All of the women come over to my mom's house and we bake all the pies and we do a ton of prep work for the big day. I made the soup for dinner for everyone, it was delicious. Everyone liked it. I uses the butternut squash, acorn squash, an apple and a pear. I used an immersion blender to smooth the squash, apple, and stock together.
Once smooth, I added some apple cider, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. I tasted and tasted and tasted and couldn't figure out what to add in order to make it not taste like baby food. After some googling and searching, I decided to add 6 tablespoons of butter. That fixed my problem perfectly. It was amazing.


I then made whipped cream with vanilla bean. That was so delicious. I actually used what I needed for the soup, and then sweetened it for use on the pumpkin pies on Thanksgiving. So yummy!

I garnished with the vanilla whipped cream and some sage leaves.