Slow-cooked onion and cider soup with Gruyère toasts

Well... it was okay, but I suspect that that's due to the nature of any onion soup rather than to this specific recipe. First of all, it was pretty sweet and slightly bland, but then it also lacked a pleasant texture. The former can be tackled by adding lots of salt and pepper, the latter ... well, it's soup, what should I say? I did really enjoy the toasts, though, both because of their saltiness and their texture. Maybe you should just serve very small portions with lots of toast. I could imagine that cutting the onions as fine as possible makes a difference, though I couldn't say why.

PS: Why not melt cheese directly into the soup? Hmm, maybe that's something I should try. PPS: Bacon! Add crispy fried bacon and you'll have the salt and the texture problem solved with just one ingredient. Makes the soup non-vegetarian, though...