French Onion Soup

It's flu season, and there is absolutely no better way to kill the flu than with French Onion Soup. And it's tasty too!

Here's what you do:

Saute 3 sliced yellow onions and 3 cloves of garlic. When they're cooked, add 2 cans Campbell's beef broth (or your own homemade beef stock if you have it). Add to that 1/2 tsp marjoram, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, and 1 heaping tsp hot dry mustard mixed into just enough water to make a medium paste.

Next make croutons: break apart old stale bread (best if it's been in the freezer for at least a year) onto a baking sheet. Cover in fresh Parmesan cheese. Bake in a moderate oven until golden brown.

Slice mozzarella cheese - DO NOT use the partially skimmed crap! It tastes like cardboard and will ruin your soup. Go out of your way to find a deli that has real mozzarella.

You have enough soup for 4 onion soup bowls (oven safe, usually with handles). Into each bowl layer some croutons, ladle a scoop of soup, add a layer of mozzarella. Repeat. This should fill the bowl. Top with more fresh Parmesan.

Bake at 350F for about 25 minutes with no lid - you want it heated so that your cheese is gooey and brown on top, but not so long that it is runny .

Om nom nom.

Baklava Cake

Like baklava but hate working with phylo pastry? I can't even spell it so you know I just described myself! This is a modified recipe of a Greek walnut cake that, with syrupy goodness, is baklava in cake form. (If you are averse to syrup you can totally use cream cheese icing...)

Cake:
Beat 7 eggs for something crazy like 5 minutes.
Add 1 tbsp almond extract and 1 tbsp real vanilla extract.
Add a mixture of half oil half milk that comes to 1 1/2 cups liquid.
Beat again. Give it a good thrashing.

Combine in a separate bowl 3 1/2 cups flour, 2 cups white sugar, 1 tsp baking soda, 2 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp allspice, 1 tsp ground ginger. Mix evenly.

Add to wet mixture 1 cup of crushed walnuts - crush with rolling pin (releases oil, totally yummy) and measure after crushed, not before.

Beat the wet bowl like mad.
Add the dry stuff a cup at a time and beat it.
Then when pretending you're Michael Jackson no longer works and it's getting too thick, add a splash or sploosh of milk to adjust consistency. And beat it some more.

Pour into a big cake pan lined with parchment paper. What size is big, you ask? Bigger than a square cake pan but not as big as a lasagne pan. I've never measured my cake pan. I inherited it from my grandmother, and her cakes were always awesome.

Bake in a 350F oven for about an hour (at Saskatoon altitude - more in Edmonton and less in Estevan). Cake is done when knife in centre comes out clean.

Syrup:
Combine in a pot approximately 2 cups brown sugar (this is an excellent use for your rock hard brown sugar - it doesn't have to be an exact amount, just close) with 2 1/2 cups of water and 1 short cinnamon stick, and about a tablespoon of lemon juice. Boil until thicker. Refrigerate to cool. Pour over cooled cake. Om nom nom!