This is what happens when your husband decides to buy two bunches of asparagus for dinner and promptly forgets about the second one. And look, a photo!   Cream of Asparagus Soup oil or butter for pan (I used olive oil) 1 onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, chopped 1 lb asparagus, chopped, reserve tips 2 cups chicken stock 1 cup milk or cream 4 slices prosciutto Chop everything up. Bring stock to a boil in one pan (or thaw and boil in the microwave, in my case!). In another, heat oil. Add onions and garlic. Heat approx. 10 minutes until soft. Add asparagus and 2 slices prosciutto and heat until soft. Approx 5 minutes. Add basil for 30 seconds before removing from heat. Put asparagus mixture into blender. Add broth as needed to help puree. Transfer puree back to pan. Rinse blender with remaining stock and add to pan. Add cream and asparagus tips. Heat until tips are cooked. Serve warm; sprinkle remaining prosciutto on top. To make this dairy free I used olive oil (would have preferred butter) and a soy coffee creamer in place of milk/cream.

Having a blog is a great way to organize your thoughts! I'm going to keep updating this post as I figure this key element out. Baby Girl has a dairy allergy, and I suspect an egg allergy, which makes the whole cake thing a bit challenging. There is a really popular Wacky Cake out there, but it uses cocoa powder, which I'm not too keen on. One, I don't like chocolate cake, and two, last time she had any caffeine (I had an Earl Grey soy latte at 7pm while nursing), she was wired until 3am. Now, she was three weeks old at the time, but it's not an experience I want to repeat! So no cocoa powder, and I don't know how integral to the recipe it is. Cake trial number one: Pinterest lead me to a Vanilla Sponge Cake that can be made gluten, dairy, egg, nut, and pretty much all allergen free. I'm going to make this for desert when we have Ryan's expectant godsister and her hubby over to check out some of my baby carriers (I may have a bit of a carrier problem...). Hopefully this works and we'll be all set. If not, I have a box of my favourite "looks like you spent hours instead of less time than it takes the oven to heat up" desert on hand. Cake colouring: Another Pinterest find (what part of this party didn't get it's source from Pinterest? Oh, right, the movie!), I want to make it a rainbow cake, without any food colouring. Frosting: I am not a cake decorator. Any time I've tried to ice something in the past it has gone horribly wrong. And yet, I still wanted to give it a shot. I found a buttercream recipe I could adapt to be dairy free (what? buttercream doesn't actually have butterjQuery15206313854226691823_1400019203538? I had no clue!). And as lovely as the Hydrangea frosting is, I didn't think I'd be able to pull it off, so I went with the much more popular (and simple, and supposedly super quick) rose design. I also love her video tutorial. I need to make a trip to Michaels to pick up some piping bags and an "M1" tip and I'll give it a try! Wish me luck (I'm going to need it!).   Cake One Results: It was a bit oily, insanely sweet, and a little dense, but I think I can work with this recipe. The icing was really oily, so I'm going to experiment with mixing shortening and Earth Balance spread. Cake trial number two: My girlfriend wanted to see how I did the roses, so I whipped up a second cake over the weekend. This time I used club soda instead of water, apple sauce in place of the oil, and reduced the sugar by a quarter cup. The cake ended up quite dense and not sweet enough. The icing wasn't as thick as it should have been, so I need to play with the ratios a bit more. Cake trial number three: I made this cake for Baby Girl's one year photo shoot/cake smash. I went back to water, split the oil/apple sauce 50/50, and increased the sugar slightly. I was pretty happy with the cake, but still found it dense. The joys of not being able to cook with egg! I tried colouring the icing using blended strawberries and it was a complete disaster. I had to start over from scratch with zero time left. The final cake: I made both a sheet cake (double batch) and a "smash" cake for Baby Girl. During the week between cake three and her party we discovered that eggs were okay, so I decided to ditch the oil/apple sauce struggle and just use egg, which really helped the fluff factor (though it is still a pound cake!). Icing wasn't great again. I didn't tint the cake, so I coloured the cake with some liquid dye I had (after the disaster with cake three I wasn't fussing with alternative colouring sources). I made the icing slightly too runny this time. I iced the cake on Saturday night and by the party on Sunday the roses on the side of the smash cake had slumped a little.   Final opinion: I am not a cake person! I'll probably switch to pies or other deserts after this. No one cares about a two year old doing a cake smash, thankfully. The cake, however, was a huge hit.   Some other links that caught my eye include: Dairy/Soy free frosting Vegan Orange frosting

My family does Christmas morning at my parents' house each year. We do a yummy brunch while opening gifts. In previous years I've made this coffee cake, but wanted to do something different this year. Also, being dairy free, I was worried about finding frozen yeast rolls I could eat. For several years I've eyed Pioneer Woman's cinnamon buns, but they look like too much work (especially when we are hosting Ryan's mom for dinner on Christmas Eve, when I should be preparing it). And there is a lot of butter in that recipe! Any time I see an overnight/wifesaver type of recipe pop up on Pinterest I add it to my Christmas board, so after some browsing of the options I came across this Overnight Caramel French Toast. It does call for a bit of dairy, and the heavy cream was concerning, but I was able to find substitutions for everything! Dairy Free Overnight French Toastmodified from Six Sisters' Stuff Topping: 1 cup packed brown sugar 7 tablespoons dairy free margarine (I used Earth Balance buttery spread) 1/3 cup less a tablespoon soy coffee cream 1 tablespoon corn syrup Optional: crushed nuts (pecans or walnuts would be good) French Toast: 6 eggs 1 cup dairy free milk (or use the coffee cream if you won't have any other use for it) 2 teaspoons vanilla 1/2 teaspoon salt dairy free bread slices to fill your pan (I found a nice airy artisan bread at my local grocery store with lots of holes to sop up the batter) Directions: Coat a non-stick 9x13 baking pan with something to keep this from sticking. Yes, it's that sticky. I did a light coat of olive oil and we had issues. So don't skimp, especially on the sides. In a 2 quart saucepan mix and heat the caramel sauce until smooth. Don't boil it! Transfer into the baking pan. In a bowl that will fit your bread nicely (to sop up the very last bit of egg batter), mix the French Toast ingredients (except the bread). Dip your bread to get it sopping wet and transfer to the baking pan. I placed mine on a 45 degree angle so I could get more bread in, the original recipe placed them flat. I think there is enough caramel sauce you can fit in the extra bread and still have lots, but feel free to be caramel greedy. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours. Bake uncovered for 20-25 minutes at 400 F until bubbly and toast is golden brown. Let stand 3 minutes. Place a serving tray over top of the pan and invert so if flops out and the caramel goodness is now on top. Scrape any caramel still in the pan over top. Serve immediately (as if you could resist). If I make this again (and I am very tempted to), I will add a teaspoon or two (or five - I'm an addict) of cinnamon to the French Toast batter, as I found the bread a bit lacking in flavour. I'm not a fan of nutmeg or I'd also add that. Sorry for no photo, it was quickly devoured!