Spring is officially here! And in the spirit of spring cleaning I’ve started going through my packed freezer to finally use up the last of the fruit that I froze last year. I got a ton of blueberries and blackberries from my CSA and have been using them in muffins all winter but after last week’s Pop Tart adventure I didn’t really want muffins or anything too carb-y. I’ve been craving a lemon dessert lately and lemons always pair well with berries so this was the perfect opportunity to finally make something.

Even though lemons are technically a summer fruit, there’s really nothing else that evokes Spring to me as much as a lemon. It’s just so fresh and bright, like the colorful blooms that are popping up all around my neighborhood these days. It’s the perfect thing to help transition between the stark coldness of winter and the hot sunniness of summer.

I had bookmarked a recipe for lemon cream a while ago so I finally decided to give it a try. The recipe turned out to be so simple and tasty that I immediately made another batch using limes and then put them both together in this parfait. The cream is made by whipping together yogurt, cream cheese and little bit of honey, then you stir in citrus juice and zest to add flavor. The yogurt and cream cheese combine to make a dessert that is light and fluffy like whipped cream, but with a thicker consistency like a mousse. This is just about the easiest dessert to make and it’s healthy to boot.

The parfait has blackberries sandwiched between a layer of lemon cream and a layer of lime cream. Since it’s a tart dessert with not much sweetener, I made a simple blackberry syrup to drizzle on top which added just the right amount of sweetness for me. I really liked the combination of the lemon and lime together but this parfait would work just as well with one or the other. And blueberries would work great instead of the blackberries.

My only complaint was that the berries were a bit mushy and definitely not at their best flavor due to being in my freezer for many months. Fresh berries are the way to go with this recipe, but since they’re not in season yet (or if you’ve got tons of berries in your freezer like me), I think it’ll be better to make frozen berries into a simple compote. That should help to intensify their flavor. Plus, the compote adds a bit more sugar for anyone wanting a sweeter dessert.

Get the recipe for Lemon and Lime Cream Parfaits with Blackberries »

Just like Spaghetti-os and Oatmeal Cream Pies, Pop Tarts are one of those things I loved when I was kid but have tried to stay away from as an adult. But since I had so much fun learning to make those other favorites at home, I figured it was time I finally attempted a Pop Tart. With the other recipes I was trying to make a homemade version that was close to the taste and texture of the originals. This time I wanted to make a healthier Pop Tart. But one that still, you know, tastes good. And while this recipe isn’t especially low fat (by my calculations it’s about the same as the store bought version), after some trial and error I feel like I came up with a satisfying compromise.

A Pop Tart is pretty much just pie crust with some type of filling, so the pastry dough is the most important part. I tried out several different “healthy” pie crust recipes first. Lesson learned: pie crust without butter SUCKS. It just does. But thanks to a tip from a reader (Thanks, Shel!), I figured out you can substitute healthier coconut oil for shortening. So while this dough does have butter, there’s no gross shortening and it’s still flaky and moist. Yay!

To add more whole grain to the tarts I substituted some of the white flour for oat flour. I just really like the flavor that oat flour adds to baked goods and I think it works well with the maple-cinnamon filling. But don’t worry, you don’t need to go out and buy special flour, you can make your own oat flour just by grinding normal oats in a blender or food processor.

My favorite flavor of pop tarts when I was young was the brown sugar-cinnamon. Hands down. None of that fruity stuff, I wanted straight sugar! But I’ve grown up (a little bit) and while I’m still a sugar fiend, I’ve been trying to cut down on the processed sugar so I used maple syrup instead. The only part of the recipe where I broke my processed sugar rule was with the icing on top. My 8 year old self would not let me pass up icing these! But the icing has more maple syrup in it to give the tarts lots of maple-y flavor.

Instead of using brown sugar for the filling, I used maple sugar. Maple sugar isn’t a very common ingredient in recipes, but dammit, it should be! It’s amazing! Imagine a concentrated, crystallized form of maple syrup. It’s a little courser than granulated sugar, but it tastes delicious and you can substitute it for sugar in any recipe. The downside is that it’s tough to find and a bit expensive, I had to order mine from Amazon. If you can’t get maple sugar, you can use brown sugar instead but if you love maple syrup this stuff is worth the effort to find it! When the sugar is baked, it melts and makes a warm, gooey maple-cinnamon center for these tarts.

This recipe is very simple and flexible. Feel free to use all white flour or substitute whole wheat (or another whole grain flour) instead the oat flour. The pastry dough only takes about 10 minutes to put together (and you can do most of it in a food processor); after it chills for a short time, roll it out and cut into rectangles. The possibilities for fillings are almost endless. Fill it with cinnamon-sugar, fruit preserves, chocolate, nutella or whatever you like!

Get the recipe for Homemade Maple-Cinnamon Oat Pop Tarts »

We’ve already established that I love those crispy, chewy granola bars and I’m always on the look out for snacks like that so when I found this recipe I was almost angry with myself for not coming up with it on my own. Granola…with Rice Krispies in it. It’s so simple and obvious! It’s basically those granola bars without the extra step of making bars. I’ve always liked granola but it turns out this one simple addition was all I needed to fall in love with it.

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as adding some rice cereal to oats. The thing that makes this granola a real treat is the chocolate. The oats and cereal (and pecans if you want, I left them out) are coated in a chocolate-honey mixture and everything is baked until it’s nice and toasty. Then to make it extra good (and healthier) the granola is topped off with some dried cherries or cranberries. Eat this chocolate granola with milk like a cereal (with bonus chocolate milk left over!) or sprinkle it on your yogurt or you can just do what I do and stuff handfuls of it in your mouth. This granola is ridiculously addictive.

Since I enjoyed the chocolate granola so much, I thought it would be fun to make a peanut butter version, too. I replaced the chocolate with peanut butter and added in some peanuts and raisins. OH. MY. GOD. I’m a big fan of chocolate and will pretty much always pick it over peanut butter but if you made me choose between the chocolate and peanut butter versions of this granola I think the peanut butter granola wins by a nose (or a peanut?). But you don’t need to choose between them, just make both! Even better, make both and then mix them together in one bowl. Peanut butter cup granola! (Seriously, do it!)

This granola is so simple and only takes 10 or 15 minutes to mix up. The hardest part for me was waiting for the granola to cool completely after I took it out of the oven!

Site News: New Recipe Box

If you come over to the site today, perhaps wanting to save or print out this recipe you’ll notice some new features. I’ve teamed up with ZipList so that you can save recipes from Back to the Cutting Board to your universal recipe box. If you haven’t heard of ZipList, it’s a handy (and free!) service for creating and managing grocery lists. I’ve been trying it out for a little awhile and have been happy with how much easier my weekly meal planning has been. A lot of my favorite food bloggers and recipe sites already have ZipList integrated, so once I signed up for an account I was able to save my favorite recipes from those sites and with one click I was able to add the ingredients I needed to my grocery list. Then at the grocery store I can open up their app on my phone and check each item off as I pick it up. I’m generally very cautious about recommending products/services on this blog but I’m impressed with this service and I think it will only get better as more bloggers and recipes sites add the recipe box feature to their sites. (They even have a WordPress plugin if you’re interested in adding it to your blog!)

You’ll need to sign up for an account first if you haven’t already. After that, just click the “Add to Recipe Box” button by any recipe on this site to add it to your account. To access your recipe box, click on the link under Recipe Tools on the left side navigation or click the big red “Recipe Box” link on the sidebar.

Important Note: You may remember (or have used) the previous recipe box feature I had on Back to the Cutting Board. I think ZipList is going to be a better option for most people since it’s a service that’s used on many websites and can be accessed so many different ways. But I know from my stats that people did use the previous recipe box, so I’ve decided not to remove that feature for now. However, I’ve renamed it Favorites to makes things less confusing. So if you want to keep using that to save recipes for later or if you just want to access your saved recipes so you can re-save them to ZipList go to your favorites page here or access it from the navigation on the left side of the site (in the Recipes menu).

Get the recipe for Crispy Chocolate and Peanut Butter Granola »

Ok, it’s confession time. While my eating habits have improved a lot over the past couple of years, I still have a lot of weaknesses for the unhealthy processed food I used to eat all the time. Things like corn dogs and snack cakes and store bought cookies. But the good thing about learning to cook is that you can learn to make all the “bad” stuff you love. Yes, it may still be unhealthy, but at least you know every single ingredient that went into it and you aren’t consuming any weird chemicals or preservatives. I’ve learned to make Oatmeal Cream Pies and Oreos and chewy Granola Bars and while I can’t say I totally gave up the processed versions of those things, more often than not when I really want them I’ll make them at home.

Spaghetti-Os are another one of my weaknesses. I’m calling them Spaghetti-Os because I think that’s how they are best known, but those are actually made by Campbells. The kind I grew up on was from Chef Boyardee and they were called ABCs & 123s or Dinosaurs. Sadly, they stopped making them in the 90s and I had to settle for Spaghetti-Os which are, in my opinion, inferior. I’m mentioning this to illustrate how deep my love for this—admittedly gross-looking—canned soup goes. I figure many people may have liked it as a child as well, but you grew out of it. I never did. It’s thick and warm and comforting and most of all, simple. It’s almost like a tomato-y macaroni and cheese, actually. I was surprised to learn it had cheese in it at all, but it thickens the tomato sauce and gives it more flavor so it makes sense.

In my effort to try to reduce my exposure to BPA I’ve given up a lot of canned foods. I tried to give up my soup but after being tempted by the cans of it on the grocery store shelf one too many times I decided to make my own homemade Spaghetti-Os. It’s taken me several attempts but I finally figured it out! The recipes I tried didn’t taste right but with a few adjustments I came up a satisfying version. It turns out you need to add a little bit of sugar to remove some of the acidity from the tomato sauce. I’m pretty sure that’s the reason the Campbells version has never tasted “right” to me. I’m sure the original Chef Boyardee version had tons of unnecessary sugar—which is probably one of the reasons I liked it so much as a kid—but I found just a few teaspoons is fine.

The recipe calls for canned tomato sauce, which is what I use despite what I said about staying away from canned stuff. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, it’s winter and tomatoes aren’t going to taste very good right now. For another, it’s just easier. If you want to make your own tomato sauce, I solute you. But I’m going to keep buying my Muir Glen organic tomato sauce since I know it tastes good and their cans are BPA free. (Note: this is not a paid anything, I’m just recommending what I like to use!) And one of the reasons I always reached for canned soup in the first place was out of pure laziness, so I didn’t see any point in complicating the recipe. I like that it’s simple and that I already have all the ingredients in my kitchen. I like that it only takes 30 minutes. It’s nice to be able to enjoy this soup again, without the guilt, just like I did when I was a kid.

Get the recipe for Tomato Noodle Soup (Homemade Spaghetti-Os!) »

I hope all my American readers had a nice Thanksgiving. The past couple of years Brandon and I have had a guest to help us eat all that food, but this year was a simple Thanksgiving with just the two of us. Unfortunately, my brain kinda went on autopilot as I was preparing all my traditional dishes and I wound up making enough food for probably 5 or 6 people! Suffice it to say we had lots of leftovers.

The biggest culprit turned out to be cranberry sauce. I found a new recipe to try this year and went a little gung ho with it, making enough to feed about 12 people. Thankfully, the cranberry sauce turned out to be as good as its name: Cranberry Sauce Extraordinaire. It will definitely be my go-to cranberry sauce recipe from now on. The best thing is that it’s not just cranberries: it has apples, pears, pureed orange and other berries. You can even mix in some pecans if you want. I love cranberries, but cranberry sauce can sometimes be a bit too tart for me, so I like how all the added fruit really balances the flavor.

It was only after I made all that sauce that I remembered Brandon doesn’t even like cranberry sauce. 5 days later, after most of the leftovers were gone I still had a huge bowl of cranberry sauce taking up space in my fridge. So I decided to make it into a dessert since I knew I was more likely to actually finish it that way.

I seen other recipes for pandowdies around the internet and have been wanting to make one, so this turned to be a perfect opportunity. If you’ve never heard of a pandowdy before, it’s basically a cross between a pie and cobbler. Instead of putting a filling inside of a pie crust, you put the filling in a baking dish and just top it with pie crust. The point is to cut some holes/slices in it, so that all that filling will bubble up and become gooey and delicious. Unlike a pie where the filling usually gels together when cooked, a pandowdy filling is supposed to be juicy, more like a cobbler or a crisp. That’s why using the leftover cranberry sauce turned out to be a perfect fit for this recipe.

I’ve included the recipe for my cranberry sauce if you want to start with that or you can use whatever sauce you have leftover and add some extra apples, pears and whatever else you want to it. This pandowdy recipe is really flexible, you can make it in any size pan you want. I think it would be great in ramekins if want to make a more individual-sized dessert. You don’t even really need to bother with putting the pie crust on top in one piece, it can be cut up into smaller squares and assembled on top of your filling. I rolled it out in one piece because I think it looks nicer that way (and I’m a weird perfectionist), but it’s called a pandowdy because it generally looks kinda “dowdy” so you really don’t need to put effort into making it look nice.

Also, I should say that I’m generally scared of making pie crusts because they can be so temperamental, but this was seriously the easiest pie crust I’ve ever made. According to Bon Appetit you shouldn’t use your food processor or even bother cutting in the butter by hand, you can let your mixer do all the work! Using the paddle attachment on your mixer to cut in the butter prevents the dough from becoming overworked like it can be in a processor. It took me less than 5 minutes to mix up the dough and it rolled out easily without having to be chilled. And it tasted great; slightly sweet and perfectly flaky…my favorite kind of crust! It helps that you brush it with melted butter and sprinkle cinnamon-sugar on top.

The sweet, flaky topping and the warm, bubbly cranberry sauce and tender fruit all taste great together. Especially with a scoop of melting vanilla ice cream. I gobbled it up right after I finished taking pictures. Then I filled up the bowl all over again…

Get the recipe for Cranberry Pandowdy (and my favorite Cranberry Sauce) »

Hey look, it’s more apple recipes! Have you had enough yet? I promise to cool it with the apples after this, but I just had to share these easy and delicious recipes since apple season is almost over. Thankfully apples are available year round, but they don’t seem to taste quite as good as they do in the fall.

The great thing about this is that it’s two recipes in one. Start with 5 pounds of apples and you can make both applesauce and apple butter in the span of about 2 hours (less than 30 minutes of which is actual hands on time). I honestly couldn’t believe how simple it was.

I always figured making homemade applesauce was easy, but my laziness won out in the end. After trying this recipe, I feel really dumb because this applesauce literally takes 30 minutes to make. 30 minutes! And most of that time is simmering on the stove, so in reality it only takes about 10 minutes of actual work. That is pretty much the definition of a lazy-proof recipe. I usually spend $3-4 a pop for those little cups of applesauce that last me less than a week. Never again!

I love maple syrup and it’s a much healthier, nutrient-rich alternative to sugar so I subbed it for the sugar in the original recipe. The maple flavor is subtle but I wanted the apples to be front and center and I didn’t want it to be overly sweet. You can easily add more syrup or brown sugar to sweeten it to your tastes.

Even though I assumed applesauce would be simple to make, I figured that apple butter would be a lot more complicated so I’ve never even thought to attempt it before. But you know what? It turns out that apple butter IS applesauce. It’s just been cooked longer! As the applesauce cooks down the natural sweetness of the apples and the maple syrup intensifies so it becomes sweeter and more delicious the longer you cook it.

This apple butter tastes great slathered on just about anything, but it’s especially good on those apple cinnamon biscuits I posted last week. The recipe only makes about one and half cups of apple butter, which is fine in the fridge for up to a month so I didn’t bother canning it. One of these days I’m going to teach myself how to preserve things, but I’m not there yet. If you’re interested in canning the apple butter, follow the link to the original recipe for full instructions.

Get the recipe for Maple Applesauce & Apple Butter »

It’s nearing the end of the year which means that I only have a few more deliveries from my CSA and I’m starting to get sad when I think about not getting that box every Wednesday. But I’ll definitely be signing up for another year and, thankfully, I only have to wait about two months since they pick back up in March.

I started this blog several years ago to become a better cook and put more effort into developing healthy eating habits, but joining this CSA has really been the final kick in the pants I needed to make that happen. I’ve probably tried more new vegetables in just the last 6 months than in all of the last 10 years. It’s been great and has helped me to finally convert my inner picky eater into someone who will try anything at least once. There’s still quite a few things I don’t like (mushrooms…yuck) but at least I tried them and I’ve even found ways to hide the stuff I don’t like so it doesn’t go to waste (mushrooms always go into my favorite spaghetti sauce).

Squash is one of those things that I used to hate and completely avoided pretty much up until I was greeted with all of the yellow squash in my CSA boxes this summer. It’s still not my favorite vegetable but the more varieties of it I try, the more I like it. I was looking for recipes to use up a butternut squash and this one caught my eye because it combines all of my favorite things into one. First of all, it’s a soup and in the Fall and Winter I’m more than happy to eat soup every day of the week. Second, it has apples and you may have noticed I’ve been kind of obsessed with apples this fall. Finally, the squash and apples are roasted first and as I’ve said before, roasting make everything better.

All of those things combine into one really nice soup. Roasting the squash and apples with sage gives it a deeper, slightly smokey flavor and the apples add a subtle sweetness. It’s a very healthy soup so it’s great for lunch or a light dinner. Plus it’s dead easy to prepare. You just need to roast the squash and apples, puree and then stir in some broth. I think it may be the easiest soup I’ve ever made!

I like to eat most soups with some kind of bread and since this soup reminded me of a tomato soup, grilled cheese was the first thing that came to mind. I’ve been eating grilled cheese sandwiches forever and I always used those yellow squares of American cheese. I’m not gonna lie, I like that stuff but is it even cheese? My CSA has made me look at all food in a different way and eating super processed stuff like that makes me feel a little dirty now. So I came up with a new version of a grilled cheese that I didn’t have to feel bad about, I like to refer to it as a “grown-up” grilled cheese sandwich.

It all starts with the cheese. I just discovered smoked gouda cheese in the past year and now I like to put it on everything, so this grilled cheese has white cheddar and smoked gouda on it. Both of these cheeses are from the deli section of my grocery store so they’re more expensive than those yellow squares but I’ve learned there are some things you shouldn’t be cheap with and cheese is one of them. And if you have good cheese you also need fresh baked bread. I know I should make it myself, but the bakery in my grocery store already does a great job of it and I’m lazy, so store bought it is. I mix in a little rosemary with my butter and then spread it on the each slice of bread. You can use thyme or sage if you like them better but the herbs (even dried herbs) add nice flavor to the bread and I think rosemary pairs especially well with smoked gouda. It’s still a grilled cheese so it’s not complicated, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t class it up a bit!

Since the sandwich packs in a lot of flavor with the cheddar, gouda and rosemary, it’s a nice compliment to the roasted squash-apple soup with its more subtle flavors. The soup (which can be made with pumpkin, too) can be made ahead of time so it’s great to heat up for lunch or dinner. It would also make a great starter on Thanksgiving or to go along with those leftover turkey sandwiches the next day!

Get the recipe for Butternut Squash-Apple Soup & Gouda Grilled Cheese »

Remember when I said I was excited about making soup this fall? Well, the prospect of soup sounded so good that I may have jumped the gun a little. But that’s ok because this might as well be called “Summer’s Almost Over Soup.” It’s full of fresh and bright summer produce but it’s warm and hearty and creamy and perfect for those late summer evenings when the temperatures are finally starting to drop.

I really wasn’t expecting this soup to be so good, I was just trying to use up the two weeks worth of yellow tomatoes from my CSA and this recipe fit the bill. I wound up changing the original recipe quite a bit, though. That’s what I love about soup, you can almost always add your own spin to it without risking messing it up completely. For instance, if you can’t get your hands on yellow tomatoes, I’m sure regular tomatoes would work just fine.

My main change was to roast the tomatoes. Roasted vegetables are my favorite side dish, I can’t think of any vegetable that isn’t improved by oven roasting so the thought of concentrating all those flavors into a soup practically had me salivating. I roasted the tomatoes along with a yellow bell pepper, onion, garlic and a red jalapeno. The original recipe calls for canned chipotle chilies, which are just red jalapenos that have been smoked so all I had to do was add a little liquid smoke to get the same flavor.

I have to warn you: this soup is really spicy. But I’m a total wimp when it comes to spicy stuff and I loved it. The heat is what takes this soup above and beyond any tomato soup I’ve ever had and I think it would be pretty boring without it. But if you’re worried, I used the whole jalapeno including the seeds; you can remove the seeds for a less spicy soup.

How have I gotten this far and not mentioned the bacon?! Oh yes, lots of delicious bacon. And this soup is really easy to make. The roasted vegetables are pureed (a lot or a little depending on how chunky you like your soup) and then added to the pot with the bacon, some broth and a little wine. After the ingredients have simmered for a little while and all the flavors have come together heavy cream is stirred in to give the soup that perfect creamy texture. This tomato soup is not for the faint of heart, but it’s worth every spoonful. And spicy foods make you burn more calories, right? It practically makes up for itself in the end. (Ok, not really, but it’s so good you won’t care.)

Update: I got orange tomatoes in my CSA box this week and my first thought was to make more of this soup. I used a mix of large orange tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and red peppers. It tastes just as good and it’s actually a much prettier color than the yellow tomato soup. So feel free to use whatever color tomatoes you want!

Get the recipe for Roasted Yellow Tomato Soup »

I have a confession: I don’t really like yogurt. I’ve tried so many times over the years to make myself like it, but it always ends with me having to throw out a bunch of expired yogurt containers. But then I made that Cherry-Rhubarb Fool last month and I realized that yogurt can be good as long as it’s the base for something else. So yogurt by itself = meh, but yogurt + fruit + whipped cream = yum.

Last week I got some absolutely gorgeous peaches and cherries from my CSA and I had big container of yogurt that was close to expiring, so I decided combining them would be a great way to use everything up. But instead of mixing it all together like I did with the fool I made it a yogurt parfait. Because what’s more fun than a parfait? It just feels so much more decadent than a simple bowl of yogurt topped with fruit. Sometimes I have to trick myself into eating things that are better for me and this is a trick that worked really well.

This is a dead simple recipe to prepare and you could substitute lots of different fruit or berries depending on what you have on hand. The fruit is tossed in a simple syrup infused with lemon and orange. I put a layer of yogurt between the fruit and then topped the whole thing with some fresh whipped cream. It makes an incredibly satisfying breakfast or dessert.

I’m glad to have found a way to make yogurt more palatable for myself, but still, I have to admit that yogurt is not terribly exciting. But Maple Granola Brittle? That is pretty exciting to me. I couldn’t really say for sure how healthy this stuff is for you since it does have quite a bit of sugar, but it at least contains lots of other good ingredients like oats and almonds and fresh orange juice. And that’s good because this brittle is addictive. I’ve been snacking on it all week long!

The recipe is relatively simple to prepare, too: start with some granola, cook sugar, maple syrup and orange juice together until it caramelizes, add the granola to the caramel and roll everything flat. It dries hard, but it’s thin enough that it’s not difficult to chew. When you break it up into smaller pieces it’s like eating little granola cookies. The maple and orange flavors really shine, so I highly recommend using good quality syrup and fresh squeezed orange juice.

This brittle is perfect to serve with the yogurt parfait since its crunchiness is such a great contrast with the soft yogurt and fruit. You can play with the granola mix to add in your favorite kinds of nuts or seeds. I don’t like lots of “stuff” in my granola so I just put in some chopped up almonds and ground up flaxseed, but you can add in or substitute pecans, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or whatever else you like.

Get the recipe for Cherry-Peach Yogurt Parfaits with Maple Granola Brittle »

It feels weird to be posting a soup recipe when it’s almost April, but it actually snowed in Charlottesville this past weekend so Spring isn’t quite here yet, at least for many of us in the top half of the country. And you know what? That’s kind of okay with me. Spring is beautiful time of year up here, but I actually prefer cold weather. Plus I get to eat more soup! I don’t think there’s anything I love more than soup (well anything that doesn’t have sugar in it, anyway).

During the colder months I make soup at least once a week, but I’ve been making it less in the past few months. So last week when the temperature dropped and brought rain and snow with it, I knew I had to make some soup. I figure it’s my last chance before it gets too warm. I recently had some potato soup at Panera Bread and it made me remember how much I love it, so I decided to improvise my own version at home. I love spicy soup like my favorite Chicken Tortilla Soup and I love cheesy potato soup, so I figured I would combine those two into a single Tex-Mex inspired potato soup.

I looked up other potato soup recipes for reference and many were made with ingredients like cream and eggs. I wanted to keep things lighter since I knew I would be adding cheese and bacon, so I made a very thick base by blending up potatoes, carrots (you can’t taste them, but they make the soup a pretty color!) and chicken broth and then I used non-fat evaporated milk and melted 2% cheese to make it creamy. You would never be able to tell this is a “light” potato soup, though. It’s just as thick and creamy as any of the higher fat versions of it I’ve ever had.

The soup is filled with hearty vegetables like onions, garlic, carrots, bell pepper, jalapeno pepper and of course lots of potato. Add to that some bacon, cheese, cilantro and little lime juice for good measure. At first I was worried that all this stuff wouldn’t work well in a potato soup, but in the end I think this the best potato soup I’ve ever eaten! It’s thick and creamy, spicy and cheesy and so very satisfying.

Get the recipe for Tex-Mex Potato Soup »