Carrot Cashew Soup

I have been on the hunt for a new soup recipe that will help me use some of the chicken stock I have been accumulating lately.  I stumbled upon this carrot cashew soup recipe today and decided to give it a try.  I am huge fan of cashews because they are so creamy when pureed and make a great dairy substitute.  The recipe author says she loved this soup so much that she wanted to drink it with a straw, and I have to agree.  I haven't had very many carrot soups, but this one is really good.

I had a hard time deciding how many carrots to use.  The recipe calls for 1 lb. but when I had them peeled it just didn't look like very many carrots, so I did 2 lbs.  It turned out to be a good choice because 1 1/2 cups of cashews is a lot and I needed more carrots and stock in order to off-set them.  If you want to use 1 lb. of carrots I would recommend doing only 3/4 cup of cashews.  I think this is a good way to go because I ended up making a huge batch of soup.  Although, I put a lot of it in the freezer and will be able to pop it out for heat ups, which is super awesome.

I found the recipe here.  The recipe includes roasting the carrots, onion, and garlic, which I think is one of the main secrets to the tastiness of the recipe (that and the cashews).  It took extra time and effort, but I think it was well worth it.