Pasta & Pinatas.

To end the week, snapshots from two recent culinary experiments - one failed, the other fruitful. 

In the first, the lovely Lily and I attempted to bake this magical-looking pinata cake featured recently on A Subtle Revelry for a friend's birthday. If you click through, you'll see that Victoria's cake is perfectly spherical and delightfully tender-crumbed. Our version, however, collapsed immediately, its texture resembling something closer to wet sand than soft pastry. ("It's an art piece," we decided.) Luckily, our birthday girl loved it unconditionally.

In the second experiment, a group of friends (the same ones mentioned here) and I decided to try our hand at making pasta from scratch. Equipped with a pasta roller, a drying rack meant for clothing, and a couple of pounds of expensive sausage, we set to work, churning out a batch each of linguine, fusilli, and orecchiette.  To our amazement, everything was delicious. The prep time totaled several hours, but hey. It was worth it.

Success! We plan on making ravioli next, and then I'd love to try tagliatelle - this could end up being a summer of many pastas. I'm certainly game.

In the meantime, wishing you all a wonderful weekend! Any interesting plans?