Epic Fail

Oh boy, did I ever had an epic fail yesterday.  I'm still recovering mentally.  There's always a story....

Last weekend, Dean and I were at Break Forth in Edmonton.  Break Forth is a huge non-denominational conference, with big sessions with well known speakers, small workshops, concerts, etc.  Yeah, us and about 15 000 of our closest friends were there.  ;)  Oh man, it is such a good time, so much fun and the calibre of music and speakers is high.  We went hard for 2 1/2 days; it starts Friday evening and goes all the way through until Sunday night, if you buy in on the Sunday night closing concert.

We opted for the Sunday night concert this year.  Down Here blew me away, so good!  How many stories are there that I could tell you about Down Here....  Amazing band.  Look them up, and, while you're at it, check out Marc Martel and his upcoming adventures with the Queen Tribute Band.  Starfield was next and were also enjoyable although I'm not familiar with their stuff.  The main band that closed the night was Third Day.  I've listened to a lot of their stuff over the years and was pumped up for them in an exhausted sort of fashion so when they hit the stage with a louder volume than I've experienced anywhere ever (and I've been to a LOT of concerts), we made an early exit about 3/4 of the way through their set.  With a packed room of 12 to 15 thousand people, I don't think they noticed!  My ears hurt.  I've really never had that happen before.  But, really, they were SO good.  And we were so tired.  And completely satisfied with all that we had been part of for the entire weekend, so missing 10-15 minutes of their concert really wasn't a hardship!

Monday morning we needed to say farewell to Edmonton and hit the road.  On a whim, we headed to Whyte Avenue on the way out of town, hoping on hope that the Vietnamese Sub restaurant that Dean had been to in the summer would be open so that we could grab some food for the road.  We were too early and would have had to wait around for another hour just for them to open, so decided to pursue one final adventure before returning to P.A.

We entered the correct search into the GPS and successfully found our way to an Italian Grocery Store.  I didn't know that there was an Italian community in Edmonton to support it, but there are actually two Italian Grocery Stores.  And these are the real deal.  They are no tourist trap, there is nothing fancy about the store, other than it excels in, well, Italian foods.

Mommy.

I want to go back there.

Okay, there is an entire aisle of pastas.  Every style, shape and color of pasta that you can think of and no Catelli to be found.  Then there are shelves laden with tomatoes.  Shelves entirely dedicated to olive oils, balsamic vinegars.  An Italian deli, with Italian meats and Italian cheeses. 

THEN, sigh, an Italian bakery.

Oh my word.  The bakery.  Dozens of loaves of rustic breads sitting out, freshly baked.  We came home with two loaves of bread - one round flat loaf, dusted with flour on the top, and one loaf of olive herb bread.  So tasty. 

We also came home with dessert to share with Dean's parents and the boys for supper that night.  And this is where I died.

We picked six different pieces from the selection - a stuffed cannoli, vanilla butter horn, vanilla layer torte, butterscotch layer cake, lemon layer cake and, the piece de resistance, a pistachio layered torte.

After we paid for our groceries, we picked up two cups of coffee to go from their cafe along with two croissants, drizzled with chocolate and sliced almonds, stuffed with nutella and hit the road, having left a mere $7.75 behind for our snack.

It was quiet for awhile.  All of that savoring and chewing and sipping of good coffee.

There was so much to talk about on the way home; memories of the conference, things we learned, things we enjoyed, things that challenged us, layers of habits that we need to re-think.  Good things.  I love being shown that there are different ways to live than the way we've become comfortable with.  One speaker told us that we trick ourselves into falling in love with the mundane because we're afraid to step out into new things.  We can totally relate to that.  We're hungry for freshness.

And so we arrived back home and were greeted with smiles and hugs from the boys.  It's good to come home to love.

We sat down to supper and eagerly shared our experiences with anyone who was ready to listen.  And then dessert came out.

We cut thin little slices off each piece so that we could each have a taste of everything.  They were all wonderful, really wonderful.  But the piece that took my breath away was the Pistachio Layered Torte.  The dessert consisted of thin thin layers of a light cake, with 1-2 different fillings layered between the cake, repeated.  Colored the palest shade of green, the delicate flavor of pistachio shone through.  I was in heaven.  I am not a cake fan, but this cake was heaven.

Later this week, I went on an internet search for a recipe that might come close to duplicating this treasure.  The first results were easy to dismiss, being various concoctions of cake mixes mixed with pistachio pudding.  Many versions of the classic pistachio pudding/cool whip/cream cheese dessert that we all made in the 90s appeared and were also easily eliminated.  Once I added "Italian" to the "pistachio torte" search, the search became more refined and I eventually settled on a recipe that seemed as if it might come close to what we'd had.  I bought the ingredients and settled down to bake yesterday afternoon.

On first glance, I thought everything was headed in the right direction.  The cake itself seemed a pretty basic white cake recipe with pistachios added.  It was to be baked in a loaf pan, which seemed okay as it had to be split into three layers anyway.  When it came out of the oven, I was satisfied that it had risen enough and wasn't too dense.  When I split it into three layers, though, I thought the layers were far too thick, but hey, a good filling could make anything work. 

The filling was a simple mix of ricotta cheese (Italian, right?) and icing sugar/vanilla.  This is where the whole thing really headed into disaster land.  As I mixed the ricotta cheese with the icing sugar, it started to get rather runny.  I added more and more icing sugar and whipped it more and added even more icing sugar and it just remained a watery soupy mess.  By now my heart has sunk all the way to my slippers.  It is obvious that it is far, far from the delicate light dessert that I had been treated to from the bakery.  However, I pushed through, assembled the layers and put it in the fridge to set up.  I was so discouraged and frustrated.  Ben kept saying "I'm sorry that your cake didn't turn out".  I sat on the couch and pouted all night for awhile then worked up the nerve to try a piece.  Yeah.  Nah.  Epic fail.  It is just one step away from a pistachio loaf.  Not what I wanted at all.

But, if you're going to try to step out into new things and away from the mundane, you're not always going to be met with success, right?  If I was really afraid of trying new things, I'd be eating chocolate chip cookies out of the bag. 

I want more there to be more to my life than chocolate cookies from the bag.

I will go back to the drawing board on this one.  As I've thought through the specific flavors that I can remember, I think that a plain white cake layered very thinly would be the starting base.  Then I think that a butter cream filling laced with pistachios would have the body to support the thin layers of cake without taking away the flavor of the pistachios.  Perhaps some sturdy whipped cream might be another layer/dimension as well.

I think I need more grant money.

I think I will be returning to the Italian Grocery Store in Edmonton.

I think, next time, I might buy the whole cake.

Try something new, take two!  Your challenge for the week!