she bakes: birthday treats

This post is a bit of a double banger featuring two recipes. Aren't you lucky? Two for the price of one. Two birds with one stone. Two...recipes. that's all I've got. 

Anyway, it was my boyfriend's birthday recently and given it fell on a Tuesday there weren't many options on what to do. So naturally I decided to stay home and feed him treats. As you know, since I haven't shut up about it, I've been slightly obsessed with food since my trip to the USA. When I was in Chicago I tried my first ever deep dish pizza and I wish I hadn't. It was so amazing and nothing else has come close since. I literally haven't stopped talking about it in a year. So I decide the best resolution was just to attempt to make my own.

I used this recipe as a guide but I did change a few things to suit myself and based on what I could find in NZ, which I will note below. I also used my own dough recipe because it's tried and true and I'll list this below as well. 

I used a springform tin which worked perfectly and was just the right size. Some of the cheeses were not easy for me to find so I used mozzarella, Parmesan and colby. I also used tinned Italian tomatoes instead of chopped tomatoes with herbs added in. I used some chorizo which I mixed into the sauce (because I can). I fried off some onion and added the tinned tomatoes and the chorizo to the pan and let simmer for a few minutes. I felt that this brought some more of the flavour out and thickened it up a bit. Other than this the rest of the steps were as per the recipe. 

Pizza Dough Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 tsp Active Dry Yeast
• 1 Cup Warm Water
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 2 tsp Olive Oil
• 3 Cups Flour

Directions

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water(less than 100 degrees) in a large bowl.
2. Add salt, oil and 3 cups flour. Stir well.
3. Add flour until bowl is clean.
4. Knead for 2 minutes or more.
5. Cover with a damp cloth or oiled plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour.

Obviously I couldn't serve dinner without dessert (who would do such a thing?!). I made a lemon cake with cream cheese icing. I used this recipe which doesn't normally call for icing but I basically do what I want. Also, it was a birthday cake and it seemed cruel to serve it without icing. I made a cream cheese icing which, although I kind of made up myself, is basically the icing in this recipe. 

I added sliced almonds to the outside mostly for decoration but it ended up adding a really nice unexpected texture to the cake (which was totally on purpose) so I think I'll continue to do that in future. 

I hope you enjoyed the recipes and let me know if you try them out for yourself :)