So it would appear as though I skipped a day in this food contest week thing and viewing it this way would not be incorrect. My plans of doing a recipe each night until the due date for photo entries was foiled by a late work day, so I made up for it by making two possible entries last night, ultimately ending in my official contest entry photo!

To begin with, what I had already intended to make on Wednesday night – “Easy” Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Croutons. Here you have a soup that consists of EVOO, onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes, chicken broth, salt, pepper, orzo and heavy cream topped with grilled cheese “croutons” created with whole wheat bread and freshly-grated sharp cheddar and Muenster cheese (the recipe actually calles for Gruyère – oops, but not really). What came out was much thicker than I had anticipated and I found out that what I thought was melted cheese on the cover photo of the magazine ended up really being goodies tucked away inside the creamy, tomatoey goodness in the bowl. This ended up being one of my favorite recipes, beating the pants off of a previous tomato soup recipe I had followed (one that contained vegetarian Chorizo and was out of this world). So, in the end, best recipe, but the photos didn’t work as nicely as my second course of the night…

 

 

 

 

 

…Mini Strawberry Shortcakes from the September 2012 issue of Food Network Magazine. Ultra tasty and surprisingly rather light. We knocked out nearly two cases of strawberries (most for topping, some were finely chopped to go on top of the cake). Other features include egg white, salt, Splenda and marshmallow cream for the meringue – Splenda, salt and vanilla extract for the syrup (tossed with the chopped strawberries). The cake was just a store-bought, sugar-free angel food cake. After cutting everything up and struggling to keep the whole strawberries from falling off of their marshmallow cream-topped cakes, we threw these under the broiler (I don’t have a torch – yet) to brown the tops up nicely. Not as “sharp” of ridges on the meringue as I would’ve liked, but that doesn’t change how awesome they ended up tasting.

 

 

 

 

So before the deadline of Midnight came about, I asked around with some friends on Facebook and at home and considered how many likes the photo ended up getting on Instagram and decided to enter the shortcakes into the contest. Still no winner(s) announced, so there’s still hope. We’ll see!