The following recipe is best if made with either Vidalia onions (when in season) or large, yellow Bermuda onions. It’s fun to serve this soup in individual ovenproof crock-pots. I like to top it off with melted Gruyere, but any variety of Swiss cheese works well. This recipe is relatively fast to prepare even though it has so many ingredients … just be prepared for teary eyes!

Food Editor's Notes:

Onion soup is typically prepared with beef broth. As the laws of kashruth do not permit meat and dairy products to be eaten together, I have substituted vegetable broth for the beef broth. I use the vegetable broth recipe from The New Basics Cookbook (by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, Workman Publishing, 1989). It is rich and flavorful, low in salt, and substitutes easily in any recipe calling for chicken or beef stock. Because it has lots of pepper in it already, I do not add the ground pepper called for in the soup recipe, except at the end to taste. My family loves this soup, especially my 8-year-old, who will eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack!

I like this recipe for a lot of reasons. First, it makes a really nice rich brownie that holds up well as a base for brownie sundaes or on its own. Second, I can do it all in one 3-quart saucepan, which cuts down on clean-up time. It’s also easy enough that kids are able to help make this – of course, for them, that usually means licking the spoon clean.

I’ve also tried variants on the flavor by using different extracts, such as orange or mint, instead of vanilla. They give a nice subtle change to the flavor, but we tend to stick with the traditional vanilla extract around my house. I’ve also made these as “negative chip” brownies, using traditional semi-sweet chocolate chips for the base and mixing in half a bag of white chocolate chips instead of the rest of the semi-sweet chips.

Food Editor's Note:

This is a delicious alternative to the traditional cranberry relish. It is sweet, but not too sweet, crunchy, but without nuts, and beautiful to present on a round glass serving dish. It is very popular in our family and even the children love it. You will need an 8 1/2-cup ring mold for this recipe, which makes about 16 good-size servings. Prepare this at least one day in advance, refrigerate, and unmold just before serving.