When it's cold outside

Today's been a horrible day - wet, windy and miserable. One of those days when all you want to do is curl up with your duvet and sleep until April. I find that one of the easiest ways of making yourself feel better on a day like today is to with a big bowl of hot soup. As I was feeling lazy I resorted to the simplest of soups you can imagine ... my Mum's magical cheese soup. It's brilliantly easy, it's warming and it reminds me of early winter in Poland. I serve it with garlic bread, so that while the soup is making itself you can entertain yourself with the most advanced part of that dish - the garlic butter. 

Here, we go then...

My Mum's Really Easy Cheese Soup

You will need:

for the soup:

1 packet of Knorr 4 Cheese Sauce Mix (yep, you heard it right)

250 ml cold water

150 ml vegetable stock

1 Tbs Philadelphia (or any other cream cheese)

1 Tbs double cream

and some pepper to taste

and for garlic bread:

1 baguette

~100 g of butter (3 big spoonfuls), preferably at room temperature

2-3 cloves of garlic

a touch of olive oil

salt, pepper and some fresh parsley if you like it

Soup:

Mix the sauce mix with the water and stir until there's no lumps on the mix any more. Put on the cooker and cook until the mix boils. Then add stock, cream cheese and double cream. Cook until the soup starts to simmer, stirring ocassionally. Add some pepper to taste. And ... that's it.

Garlic bread:

Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Crush the garlic and add it to the butter with salt, pepper and a touch of olive oil (the latter makes the butter more creamy). Mix all of that with a fork and at the end stir in some parsley. Cut the baguette into about 2,5 cm slices but do not go all the way through the bread. Put a teaspoon or two between each of the slice. 

Bake for about 8 minutes or until it looks ready.

just a small edit: I am not entirely sure you can buy the Knorr Cheese Mix in the UK. I tend to stock up on it when I go home. I'm sure however that there will be similar products in the land of stabilised democracy as anything and everything seems to come in a ready-made option here.