Fabulous Foodie Feast

It's been a year since the amazing Val of More Than Burnt Toast organized a Food Bloggers' Tour of Pike Place Market. She comes to the Seattle area twice a year and it's always a treat to get to hang out with her. Since we all had such a great time doing the Market tour, it was decided that we needed to get together again. This time the venue was the wood-fired oven in the backyard of Sortachef, Don. He has an authentic wood-burning oven which he built himself (directions and pictures are on his blog), and offered to share it with us. Along with people from the tour, we added some new faces and had a lovely time getting to know each other, sharing our passion for all things food (and wine!).

When a wood-fired oven pizza is the centerpiece of the meal, an Italian theme is a natural. Start with fun food bloggers (being Italian was optional, although a trip to Tuscany didn't hurt), add antipasti,

add several different delicious wines,

design and make your own pizza,

bake it in a real, wood-fired oven,

and add a dash of dessert

and you've got a recipe for a fabulous evening!

I, of course, volunteered for dessert. My first thought for an Italian dessert was cannoli, but the logistics of transporting and filling on site, plus my fear of frying, made that option a no-go. Instead, I went with cannoli cake. It's a sponge cake with a cannoli filling, redolent with the flavors of almond and orange, which I found on the website of Cream Puffs in Venice. Since I didn't alter the recipe a bit, you can go here to get the recipe.

Thanks, Don and Kathy, for hosting this fun event! We'll have to do it again.