Homemade bithday classics

After much planning and creativity, Matt and I successfully made a homemade pizza and ice cream cake for Matt's birthday last week! For the pizza we got premade pizza dough (unprepared to tackle yeast...) and rolled it out on our pizza stone. I found a recipe for homemade pizza sauce which was easy and so good. We used all of Matt's favorite veggies and baked until golden brown crust perfection!

before:

after!

Following the main course was Matt's favorite type of cake- Ice Cream cake. This was a result of my imagination and it actually turned out good! Inspired by Coldstone cakes, it started with a box of Dark Chocolate cake mix and a carton of while mint chocolate chip ice cream, and ended in a wonderful double decker masterpiece, decorating by me with the chocolate chips, and by Matt with the gummy candies. It took a few days to freeze all the layers and get the whole thing put together, but worked out really well. It tastes really good too which is a bonus because we are STILL eating it one week later! Maybe next year I'll try to figure out how to do a cake just half this size...

before:

after!

middle:

This week is going to be a crazy work week for me, so we are pulling our second batch of Na's Pasta out of the freezer for the week. Such a nice treat! Plus after the climax of the homemade pizza and ice cream cake, I need to not push my luck! ;)

Dessert Idea...

Here's another recipe to try from Real Simple. I will give a disclaimer that I haven't actually made this yet :) but Jamie, if you still are looking for an ice-cream cake recipe, I saw this and thought of you. 

Mint Chip Ice Cream Pie

Serves 8

8 oz. chopped semisweet chocolate, melted

4 cups Rice Krispies

2 pints mint chip ice cream, slightly softened

*In a large bowl, combine the chocolate and cereal until the cereal is completely coated. Transfer to a 9-inch springform pan (I think this is a pan with a removable side, that you would use for cheesecake). Press the mixture into the bottom and 1 inch up the sides of the pan. Freeze until just firm, 5 to 10 minutes.

*Spread the ice cream in the prepared crust and freeze, covered, until firm, for at least 2 hours and up to 3 days.

Let me know if you try it and what you think! :)

Tried and True

Tonight I tried Kari's "Na's Pasta" for dinner. Delish!! The recipe is so huge, Ashley and I estimated it probably makes about 16 servings, you think, Kari?? Everything fit into two big casserole dishes. Matt, Ashley, and I managed to eat about a 1/3 of the one batch. The other 2/3 is waiting to be leftovers for the rest of the week, and the second dish is freezing for a later date :) Definitely a great recipe! It was nice, especially after a couple weeks of frozen pizzas, random stir frys or hot pockets.

Before the frozen-pizza-random-stir-frys-hot-pockets phase, I revisited another recipe that was blog worthy the first time I tried it. Reference: The Domestic Disaster. The 50 minute recipe that took 2 hours, that resulted in theatening with knives, a burnt hand, and using every dish and utensil in the kitchen to make an enormous mess. It was an absolutely awful cooking experience, but the memory of the food tasting good inspired us to try the Lasagna Roll Ups one more time (after all the stressful memories... and burns... faded away).

This time the cooking experience was a complete 180! Everything went very smooth, no burns, only minimal dishes and utensils were used... It's a complicated recipe with 3 things going on at once at times, and we harmoniously worked on different tasks at the same time and everything came together just how Giada made it look on TV. Just took a little... or a lot... more planning and communication than occurred the first time around!

Other than that there is not much new in the kitchen of Jamie... and there are 2 minutes left in the Pens game right now so I'm too distracted to wrap this up with a real concluding thought... other than GO PENS!!

:)