Cheese Topped Onion Soup

This delicious soup was our pick for French Fridays with Dorie this week. I love almost all veggies except for onions (it is a texture thing, I enjoy the flavor), but picky husband adores French Onion Soup so I decided to give this one a go for him and invite my mom, another French Onion Soup fan over for dinner. Years ago for Christmas I even bought her the same Emile Henry onion soup bowls that are pictured in Dorie's Around My French Table book, with the little lion heads on the side.

Look at that huge pot full of Spanish onions!

I had a chance to try out a new bread recipe and it was amazing! Crusty and chewy and soft and tender inside, just perfect for topping this soup. I will be making these baguettes all the time, they were such a huge hit with the entire family.

Look at how much those onions cooked down. I felt they were caramelised enough, I probably could have gotten them a little darker, but after tending to them for at least an hour and fifteen minutes to get them to this shade, I was ready to continue on in the recipe and get this soup a goin'. My only change to the recipe was to use vegetable broth instead of the chicken.

Lovely to have an excuse to buy one of my favorite cheeses, mmm, gruyere...so delicious!

Excuse the not so great photos, I was kind of in a rush to get these into the oven since everyone was hungry for dinner. I toasted little rounds of the baguette before putting them on the soup and covering them with cheese.

And there you have it, one absolutely luscious bowl of French Onion Soup. It was amazing. Even though I do not like the texture of onions, I thoroughly enjoyed the toasty cheesy top and broth. The best part was that picky husband absolutely loved this as well. The kids had something else for dinner, they had no interested in trying the onion soup. I loved the touch of brandy in the bowl, the white wine in the soup and the caramelized onions came together so perfectly. My mom thought the soup was great too, whew! I probably could have broiled the tops of the soup a touch longer, but I was nervous about broiling these bowls, they were "oven proof" but did not indicate if they were broiler safe so I was cautious. Even with pale tops, this was one delicious bowl of soup :)