Wholewheat farfalle with home-made pesto

Do you love pesto? I adore it! It's very easy to do at home and there are tons of different ways to do it. The important is to have basil, any kind of nuts and some kind of cheese that is similar to pecorino cheese.
The recipe I'm showing is with the ingredients I had at home, so it's not the original one, but still very tasty! 

Ingredients: 

60-70 basil leaf

40 gr parmesan cheese 

65 gr walnuts

1-2 cloves of garlic

salt

5 tblsp of olive oil

wholewheat pasta (approximately 90 gr per person)

 Wash the basil leafs and put them in the blender (it's better to do it manually, but if you don't have a lot of time, the blender should also work fine), add parmesan cheese, garlic and walnuts and start blending. When you have a thick paste, add salt and olive oil until you have a smooth paste. Your pesto is now ready! (You can also put it in the freezer: put it in a jar, cover with some olive oil and freeze. When you'll need it, it will take only 5 minutes to have it ready to use.)

Cook the pasta according to your taste (I prefer pasta al dente). Mix the pasta and 1 or 2 spoons of pesto well and serve still hot!

Another idea to serve pesto is as an appetizer. Use small bread slices and spread a teaspoon of pesto on the top. You can also scratch a clove of garlic on the bread before adding pesto, it will make it so much tastier.

Walnut cake

Yesterday we had a wonderful barbecue and I wanted to bake something good for my friends. I decided for this cake that I found in the book Vse o peki. 

Ingredients: 

Cake: 

4 eggs

2 spoons of orange juice

200 gr of sugar

1 envelop of vanilla sugar

150 gr of flour

1/2 spoon of baking powder

Filling:

125 gr of very soft butter

125 gr of powdered sugar

1 envelop of vanilla sugar

200 gr of chopped walnuts

Cover: 

3-4 spoons of apricot jam

Cover 2: 

2 spoons of orange juice

120 gr of powdered sugar

1 envelop of vanilla sugar

Decoration:

whole walnuts 

a few pieces of dark chocolate

a spoon of milk

Mix the eggs and the orange juice with the whisk for a minute on the highest speed. Slowly add sugar and vanilla sugar and continue mixing for a few minutes. Add the flour and baking powder, but keep the whisk on lowest speed. Put the dough in a model for cakes with the baking paper. Bake in a preheated oven on 180°C for 30 minutes.

When the cake is cold cut it in half or in 3 parts. My cake wasn't very tall, so I cut it in only 2 parts. (If you have only 2 parts, you can make less filling to put in.) For the filling mix the butter until creamy. Add sugar and vanilla sugar. Mix well and at the end add walnuts. Cover the lower part of the cake with the filling (or the 2 parts if you cut it in 3). Put the top on it and press gently. Spread the apricot jam on the top and on the side. 

Mix sugar, vanilla sugar and orange juice and do a smooth paste to put on the top. Decorate with some walnuts. In a pan melt the chocolate with some milk and decorate with it the top of the cake. Leave the cake in the fridge for an hour.