Kurbis Suppe (Pumpkin Soup)

Kurbis Suppe
From Susan

This recipe comes originally from a kind German woman... a traditional pumpkin soup (or so I hear) for these parts. They use smaller, cute pumpkins... and everyone raves about the pumpkin soup they make! So today I'm giving it a whirl! Thanks, Susan, for sharing your gems!

First of all, you'll need a pumpkin puree... however you get it. I made mine from 2 of these small pumpkins (that are everywhere right now). I used this recipe from The Pioneer Woman for my puree.

You'll probably want to get your seeds roasting as well... at least, that's what I did. After doing the above, I separated as much of the gook from the seeds as possible (in the sink in a strainer). Then I followed this roasting recipe from All Recipes.

From there, I followed Susan's recipe:

Saute until soft:

8 T Butter
2 Onions, small-medium
4 Apples, small-medium

Add:

6 Vegetable Bullion
1/2 liters of water
1 T ground nutmeg
1/2 T ground ginger
1 T cinnamon
Pear juice drained from a can of large pears

Blend well, then puree with an electric hand-held mixer that can be used with hot liquid.

Add:

8 C pumpkin flesh (can follow recipe above or do as the German woman did... peel the pumpkin and cook it in the soup!)

Cook on medium heat for 30 minutes. Puree again.

Add:

2-3 boxes (?) of schlag sahne (I think this is heavy cream... I used 1 C of heavy cream).

Serve with roasted pumpkin seeds (see recipe link above).

EAT! YUMMMmmmmmmmm!

Chocolate Chip Cookies... in Germany

I wanted a great chocolate chip cookie.

The only problem.

There are no chocolate chips in Germany. And all of my cookies, regardless, were coming out flat.

Enter my friend, Susan.

She passed this recipe on to me and, well, it was FABULOUS! Even with my little tweak (though I hope to do it her way next time :) Just to see...

Chocolate Chip Cookies (in Germany)

• 3/4 Cup Sugar (I used raw sugar)
• 3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1 egg
• 3/4 C Butter (I used to mashed bananas instead)
• 2 1/2 C Flour (plus the 1/4 C flour to make up for German flours)
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 1 tsp. Vanilla
• 400 g. Chocolate chunks (I used about half of a huge Milka bar because that's what I had... Susan uses 3 bars of Zartbitter chocolate)

Beat sugars, egg, and butter first (again, I used banana instead of butter). Add the rest and mix. Drop a spoonful of dough onto cookies sheet until it's used up. Bake 13-15 minutes at 190 degrees Celsius (374 F).

Some notes:
-Because the flour is different in Germany, you may have to add a little. A good standard is about 1/4 Cup of flour for every 2 Cups called for in an American recipe.
-The dough will seem a little dry (except my way... it just seemed sticky... banana?)
-The cookies often seem underdone when you look at the bottoms of them... but don't over-bake. I find that if they start browning on top, that they get too hard once cooled.