Christmas gingerbread soup

Recipe tested, soup eaten, so with a clear conscience I can recommend it 🙂 You can use homemade gluten-free gingerbreads, I’m recommending baking them annually. In addition to their use for soup, during the holiday season I always share them with friends and family.

Preparation

Cook vegetable broth in 3 liters of water.

Soak the gingerbreads in the water, wash the dried fruits, rinse with boiling water and cook them in plum compote, adding cloves and cinnamon sticks. Add the gingerbreads together with the water in which they were soaked in and continue to cook, stirring so that nothing will stick to the pot. Add the creamy mass to the vegetable broth, add the wine and cook for a while.

What the gingerbreads do here

They are the thickener as well as the flavour, which is why the recipe soaks them first rather than dropping them into the pot. Thirty of them break down into a purée in the compote and that purée is what turns a fruit broth into a soup. Use the plainest gluten free gingerbreads you have: iced or chocolate-covered ones bring sugar and fat that change the finish, and the soup already has coconut sugar and dried fruit doing that work.

If you bake them yourself, bake them a few days ahead. Gingerbread is easier to break up once it has gone hard, and a soft, fresh one turns gluey rather than creamy.

Two things to watch on the stove

Stirring is not optional. Once the gingerbread purée is in, the pot catches quickly: the mass is thick, sweet and sits on the base. Keep the heat low and the spoon moving, and scrape the bottom rather than the middle.

Wine at the end, and briefly. The recipe adds it last for a reason. A long boil after the wine goes in cooks off what it was added for, so give it a few minutes and take the pot off. Twenty cloves is a lot of cloves, so taste before you decide whether the spice needs anything more.

Serving and keeping

The soup is sweet, so it belongs where a sweet course belongs: after the savoury dishes rather than as the opener. It thickens overnight in the fridge and keeps two or three days; loosen it with a little of the compote or with water when you warm it, and warm it gently for the same reason you stirred it in the first place.

If you want the rest of the Christmas table planned around it, the Diet & Training by Ann app builds the week’s menu and the shopping list together.

Anna Lewandowska

Christmas gingerbread soup

A sweet and spiced Christmas soup: vegetable broth combined with gingerbreads soaked in water, dried fruit cooked in plum compote, cloves, cinnamon and a glass of red wine.

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr

Total Time 1 hour hr 20 minutes mins

Servings: 10 servings

Course: Soup

Cuisine: Polish

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

Vegetable broth

• 1 celery
• 1 parsley
• 1 carrot
• 1 onion
• 1 leek
• 2 bay leaves
• 5 grains of all spice
• pinch of salt
• pinch of black pepper

Gingerbread soup

• 1 vegetable broth
• 30 gluten free gingerbreads
• 200 g prunes
• 200 g raisins
• 200 g dried apricots
• 3 tablespoons coconut sugar
• 20 cloves
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 3 cinnamon sticks
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 litre plum compote

Method

 

1. Cook the vegetable broth in 3 litres of water.
   
2. Soak the gingerbreads in water.
   
3. Wash the dried fruits, rinse them with boiling water and cook them in the plum compote with the cloves and the cinnamon sticks.
   
4. Add the gingerbreads together with the water they were soaked in and continue to cook, stirring so that nothing sticks to the pot.
   
5. Add the creamy mass to the vegetable broth, add the wine and cook for a while.
   

Notes

Quantities are taken from the recipe box as published. The number of servings is approximate: the recipe starts from 3 litres of broth and a litre of plum compote.

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