Happy Birthday To Meeeee!!!

Well another year has come and gone. I'm now seventeen. Ya, I know it's old. Okay well relatively speaking not that old but seventeen seems a lot older then sixteen. I feel old! But I also feel slightly more awesome and slightly more insane so it's all cool.
Have you ever found that even when you expect your birthday to just be so-so and not too special it turns out to be amazing? Well, for me that seems to happen. I didn't plan a party this year or even plan to do anything special and I got two surprise parties thrown for me. Best year ever! Last Sunday a very dear friend of mine hosted one for me and then on my actual birthday my parents threw one for me. And on top of that it was sunny and warmmmm all day on my birthday. Mmm, I do love sun. I got to go for a long walk/run/skip/dance/Alyssa went a bit crazy thing. It was awesome. I know I got a few weird looks from people in cars as they drove past me skipping down the road singing loudly to a One Direction song. But who cares, I was happy and that's all that matters.
But anyway, my reason for posting on my bog was not to rant about my awesome birthday but to tell you about my amazing cake. I had told my mum that I wanted something with either chocolate or strawberries. And I got both.  She found this amazing recipe for "six layer dark chocolate cake with strawberry swiss buttercream meringue" Mmmm, just saying the name makes my mouth water.
It was a rather complicated cake that took us quite a few hours to make, but oh it was worth every minute of slaving over a hot stove and back breaking labor. Okay, I'm joking it wasn't that hard.

But annnnyyyywwwwaaayyyyy. The cake part had coffee in it as well as a bunch of chocolate so it wasn't too sweet, but still sweet enough. We baked three layers and sliced each in half to make six (I know, I can do simple math! Amazing, right? ). The frosting was made by dissolving sugar in egg whites in a double boiler and then whipping them up in an electric mixer for about fifteen minutes before adding a ton of butter and a couple other ingredients.

The most amazing frosting I've ever worked with.

We spread the frosting between all six layers agonizing over whether the layers would be perfect enough. It was a long process of setting the layer on, squinting at it, moving it a centimeter here and a millimeter there until it was as good as we could get it.

Tall layers

So after spreading frosting between all the layers I did a quick crumb coat. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's in the name. It's a thin layer of frosting to hold all the crumbs in so the top coat of frosting can look amazing and flawless. So that chilled in the fridge for what was supposed to be half an hour but turned into and hour and a half because I kinda ran off and forgot about it for a while. (Hey it was sunny!)

Crumb coat

After I finally came back to it I took the remaining frosting out of the fridge and was like "Oh well it's a bit hard so lets just mix it up to soften it" I'M AN IDIOT! But I'm sure you all already knew that... The frosting curdled. Never to return to a usable state. My mum and I tried everything. Nothing worked. So we had to make another half batch of frosting. After that escapade I was tired and honestly just about ready to bang my head against the wall and yell at myself. Can I not bake/cook anything without messing something up? I mean seriously how stupid can I be?

Well I put the top coat on smoothing it and smoothing it all around trying to get it as perfect as possible. One of the charms of this cake seemed to be in the perfectly smooth frosting and so I knew it had to be decently perfect. It actually ended up pretty well. My mum and I thought so at least.

Top coat of frosting.

Then it went back into the fridge for another chilling time and then came the scary part! Okay no not really scary, just a little bit scary. We melted bittersweet chocolate and butter in a double boiler (my great-great-grandma's if I remember correctly) and then poured it over the top of the cake carefully soothing it out a bit so it would drip over the edges.

Ta-Da! All finished!

Perfection.

The cake ended up being super tall. So the pieces were like twice the height of a normal piece, which in some ways was awesome and in other not so much. But it looked really amazing!

Six layers of chocolatey yummyness

Can you see the loving look on my face as I stare at my baby? Ya, I held great affection for that cake. 

I'm telling you blowing out 17 candles is hard! Like really hard. Like embarrassingly hard. Like I either need to stop getting older or stop blowing out candles type of embarrassing. 

Thank you to everyone, friends and family, who made my birthday extra special this year. I will never forget how amazing you all made this birthday be. I am truly blessed to have you all in my life and I am eternally thankful for everything you all do for me. I love you all so very much!

~Alyssa <3

Pesto Perfection

I have never felt so Italian in my life. But really after making pesto I felt more Italian then I've ever felt before. Maybe eating pesto makes my 1/8 of Italian expand and swell into something a quite a bit bigger? I don't know but oh, it was an amazing moment. You can ask my family, the whole time I was making and eating the pesto I had an expression of pure bliss on my face. I think I have officially found my favorite food. Pesto seems to make any food ten times better, I plopped some on chicken and I felt like I was eating a gourmet meal, I spread some on a cracker and I felt like I was eating a fancy hors d'oeuvres at some five star restaurant. If one simple taste of pesto can do that for me, then why should I ever stop eating it?
Oh and did I mention how easy it is to make pesto? It's ridiculously simple, easy and fast. Making the basic pesto probably took me around 10-15 minutes. Yes, I did say that short of a time. Hmm, I may have just found my go to food to make me look like a pro.

So, pretty much all you do is toss Basil, Romano (or Parmesan), olive oil and garlic into a food processor or blender.

Then blend it all up until the basil is thoroughly chopped. 

 And you are done! Yes, that is all you have to do. It's as simple as that. 

I also tried a couple variations to the basic pesto. I Substituted the leftover oil from sun dried tomatoes and ended up with sun dried tomato pesto and I also made a batch with pine nuts. I really can't quite decide which is my favorite. They're all so delicious. 

Now, what to do with the pesto. I could just eat it all by the spoonful, but I think my family might protest.

I took a baguette sliced it into half inch slices, lightly toasted it in the oven on both sides, spread pesto on each piece, sprinkled diced tomatoes and Romano on top and then toasted in the oven until the cheese was melted. 

Mmm, deliciousness I'm telling you! 

Well, I still had some pesto left over. Now what to do with it? How about pasta with pesto?

I quickly cooked up same pasta, threw some butter and the rest of the pesto in with it. I then added chopped chicken and sauteed tomatoes to it. Ahhh! So good! Looked like restaurant food. And if I do say so myself it tasted just as good. 

And so I invite you to join me in the land of pesto love. It an amazing place to be. I think I shall stay here for the rest of my life.

~Alyssa <3