Pizza by the Book Challenge - Week 5

This was the week I'd been waiting for.  THIS was what we were building up to. This was going to be the ultimate reward for our 4 weeks of diligence.. 

• Venue: Our House.. 
• Jon's Pizza: chocolate hazelnut with banana and vanilla gelato (ice-cream)
• Cathy's Pizza: rocky road with turkish delight, pistachios and marshmallows
• Clare: Pecan pie with salted caramel sauce

We also had some technical issues - Clare's maple and pecan pizza required us to make a caramel sauce - pretty simple really, boil water and sugar for a while, then add cream.  We're both competent cooks who have made caramel sauce many times before so I don't know if was the proportions in Pete's recipe which made it so difficult or our sense of urgency, but we struggled. The first attempt was going pretty well but then we got distracted for a moment and it burnt. The second time (cautious of burning it again) we added the cream before it was hot enough and we ended up with watery non-caramel sauce. The third time we think we over stirred (by this time we were being over-attentive) so it crystallised, the forth and fifth times (yes, it was starting to get humiliating!) we were careful not to over stir but consequently I think we didn't allow the sugar to dissolve enough (by stirring) before turning the heat up (and diligently not stirring) so it crystallised again.  On our sixth attempt it worked - we probably took it off the heat slightly early so it wasn't as brown looking as it should have been, but it was fine.  It took us about 50 minutes to make this happen, and I think that it broke our spirits.   Here's clare measuring out the sugar for the 6th time.  You'll notice her glazed eyes and slightly manic expression.  Each time she started again I optimistically put the sugar away on the very top shelf of the pantry. Each time I had to get it out again.