Brownie Pizza

 It's been a long time since I've posted a dessert but the time has come and I think you're going to like it! It all started the other day when I had a basket full of fresh strawberries and nothing to do with them. I planned on eating them like so but decided to make a dessert instead, the problem was that I didn't know what to make. Out of nowhere I remembered this dessert my mom had brought home from work once and knew that was exactly what I was going to make. We call this incredibly decadent dessert Brownie Pizza but Mike calls it a tart and I'm not sure why. And even though there is fruit on this, I recommend putting the calories away for this one.

What to Do:

1. Start by making a brownie mix according to the directions on the box. You can use a homemade brownie mix or the box stuff. I obviously don't bake much (if you follow my blog you know I like my baking shortcuts) so I gladly used my usual boxed brownie mix. Oh simplicity.

2. Instead of putting the mix in the usual 13x9 baking dish, put it on a cookie sheet that is really well greased. I believe the one I used was 13"x10". Cook for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. 

3. 15 minutes later you'll have exactly what you need. Make sure you let it cool completely. This is a cold dessert so I recommend letting it sit out or in the fridge for a couple of hours.

4. Next it's time to make the frosting. Use one package of cream cheese and 1/4 cup of sugar and beat together until the sugar is totally incorporated. If you taste it, you have to try not to eat the whole thing right then and there. Trust me, I know how tempting it will be.

5. When the brownie is fully cooled you can either move it to a fancy platter or leave it be on the cookie sheet. Because I'm not a baker I tend to have to little luck with my baked goods being transferred cleanly and in one piece so I opted to leave it on the cookie sheet. No biggie. When you have the brownie correctly placed slather (yes I meant to type that) the cream cheese frosting on top, making sure that you get the ends and corners with extra. I usually hate the edges of baked goods which I why I tend to over-compensate with them.

6. Now for the healthy stuff. I've never used any other fruits than bananas and strawberries but if you ever try this and use something else, please let me know! The important thing to remember for the fruit is to make sure all of the slices are even AND that they are patted dry to get rid of any extra moisture. You can just use a paper towel for this.

*I used two medium sized bananas and laid those down first because I know they go brown and I wanted this to look pretty.

7. Then add the strawberries.

**This is where it gets interesting.

8. Heat the fudge according to the directions then drizzle it over the brownie. You can also use chocolate syrup but I already had the fudge so I used it. 

Voilà! Foodie heaven! When you eat this you get a chewy, moist brownie with a sweet cream cheese taste. And just when it becomes too much you get the freshness from the strawberries and bananas that cut down the decadence and add their own refreshing sweetness. It's pure magic! I owe this dessert to my mother who brought it home and now has the recipe forever on my blog! Thanks mama! So I hope this has tempted you to get up and eat something sweet! Go ahead, go - I won't judge you. Until next time, cheers!

Halloween Treats - Pinwheels and Pizza

One of my favorite holidays is officially over. It makes me sad because I absolutely love Halloween, but I'm also excited because it means the holiday season has officially started. When I was little my parents would let me go all out for Halloween, sometimes having multiple costumes for school and trick or treating. As I got older I looked forward to the month long airing of scary movies. Now I would never say that I'm too old for trick or treating because you can never be too old for a costume and candy, but since my life has been getting increasingly more hectic, the thought of walking in the cold, dressed as a sailor, knocking on strangers doors in an area I'm still new to didn't sound like my kind of thing, besides I had already gone out on Saturday night and had a fabulous time.

 

It didn't help that Halloween was on a Monday this year either, so I was ready to kick back and veg out. I did buy two bags of candy for any trick or treaters that might stop by (but what kid wants to climb stairs just to get candy... ok probably a lot) but our plans consisted of a scary movie marathon, margarita style pizza, and spinach and tomato pinwheels. I don't know if the whole bowl of candy was intended to be on the menu, but Mike and I ate it as an appetizer, main course, and dessert. Ooops...

Right before the good parts of Signs started we made our pizza. In 20 minutes dinner was done. As most of my go-to meals, these are semi-homemade to - you know how I roll.

Pinwheels

I'm not sure what these are really called but this name works for me. I got this idea from a Pillsbury commercial shown during the holidays last year, but I added a little extra oomph - tomatoes!! This is the perfect appetizer. I'm thinking about making these for Christmas Eve when I visit my family because they're so easy.

What You'll Need:

1 can (roll?) of refrigerated biscuits

chopped frozen spinach

1/2 a tomato

1/2 C of mozzarella cheese

Start by taking out all of the biscuits and rolling them into one piece of dough. Make sure the dough is rolled about 1/2 an inch thick. Sprinkle the cheese, spinach and tomatoes and lightly press down into the dough. Then roll the dough as tightly as possible and cut the roll about a 1/4-1/2 inch thick and place them on a greased cookie sheet. Bake them for as long as the container says to - about 10 minutes.

Eat them while they're hot. We ate ours with the pizza and it was the perfect meat-free (guilt-free) meal for a night in. 

Margarita Style Pizza

Once again this is an ode to a semi-homemade meals. I didn't feel like making a homemade crust so I bough one from the store. The crust was a little more spongy than I'm use to but the taste worked because of all the flavors on top. I made my own pizza sauce too.

What You'll Need:

Pizza Sauce

Pizza Crust

Mozzarella cheese slices

Basil

Tomato slices 

How could a pizza this simple be bad? For my sauce I just used one small can of tomato sauce and added some salt, garlic powder, Parmesan cheese, pepper, and oregano. I spread the sauce over my store bought crust, then put a layer of basil, cheese and then tomato.

Bake the pizza for 14 minutes at 450 degrees. This is just long enough to put the dishes in the sink (to wash later) and perhaps make a drink...hmmm...

This pizza is the perfect light pizza to eat while your sitting in sweats watching scary movies on the couch. I put a little fresh basil (which is currently my new obsession) on top and curled up - mainly because I was too scared to keep my feet on the floor... The tomatoes are so juicy and the cheese is so creamy that you should probably make two pizzas because they're so good.

We ended up having the best Halloween. It was perfectly relaxing and I couldn't have asked for anything better. I hope you all had a good Halloween too. I look forward to starting the fall off with you guys. Cheers!

Double-Feature Pizza

One of the things Mike and I like to do in the summer is go to the drive-in. We always take our own snacks and dinner and veg out in our pajamas. They do the usual two movies, or three on the weekends, and every Tuesday they have a discounted price. We usually order a pizza and take it to go, but last summer we decided to make our own pizza and take it. We did the same thing last night. It's surprising how easy it is to make your own pizza, and you can make it however you want without the extra charge for toppings.

You'll want to make your dough ahead of time. I leave any dough-making for Michael because I'm not much of a baker and dough tends to get me frustrated. Instead, I'm in charge of toppings and sauce (fine by me).

What You'll Need - Dough:

4 1/2 C Bread Flour

2 t Salt

1 t Yeast

1/4 C Olive oil

1 3/4 C Ice water

Bread mixer

Mix all of the ingredients together in the bread mixer. Switch the machine to the "dough" setting and press start. Let it mix for and hour and a half. 

 When it's done, take it out and separate it into two (yes you get two pizzas), roll them into two separate balls, and put them in ziplock bags and place them in the fridge. It's best to leave them overnight but you can do a couple of hours too.

Test Pizza

Since we had two sets of dough, we decided to make a cheese test pizza for lunch.

What You'll Need:

1 dough roll

Favorite pizza sauce

8 oz of shredded Mozzarella cheese

While the dough was in the fridge Mike shredded the cheese.

Meanwhile I was getting the sauce ready. Warning - the sauce isn't very technical. It's more about the taste you prefer but mine is a good base to start with. 

This will be more than enough sauce for two pizzas.

2 8 oz. Cans of tomato sauce

1 1/2 t Chopped garlic

1/3 t Honey

1/4 t Salt

1/4 t Pepper

3 T of Parmesan cheese

1 1/2 t Oregano

1 t Basil

1 t Garlic powder 

*side note* If you use tomato paste instead of sauce, do 8 oz. of paste and 8 oz. of water.

Before you get your hands dirty, preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Now it's time to stretch out the dough. Like I said before, this is Mike's job. Start by putting some flour on the counter. The dough doesn't stretch out too big so don't worry if you have an apartment-sized kitchen like we do. Mike stretched the dough until it was around a 1/4 of an inch thick.

When it's stretched, put it on a big cookie sheet and put the sauce on. Put as much as you'd like (remember you made enough for more than two pizzas) and leave a 1 inch space around for the crust.

Put the cheese on, try not to munch off the plate... Place it in the oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes. You can sit on your kitchen floor, like we did, looking at it bake if you'd like.

Okay.... problem. Despite my best efforts to persuade him not to, Mike used a baking stone. I know lot's of people use them for even baking, blah, blah, blah, but I don't care for the things. I like things, especially my pizza, with some crunch. This didn't happen using the stone. Hey, I never said everything on my blog would be perfect... despite my best efforts. The pizza was delicious, don't get me wrong, but I could compare it to a frozen pizza. Everything was very one-note. Do you know what this means? We made another one *smiles.*

Of course we still ate it - even okay pizza is good pizza!

The Real Deal- Pizza Number 2

So after lunch, and a new game plan, we stepped it up. We made our favorite combo pizza - DELISH!! It's the same basic concept as the first pizza, with a few small adjustments.

What You'll Need:

1 Dough roll

My pizza sauce

1 Carton of mushrooms

1 sm Green bell pepper

1/2 package of Canadian Bacon (or sliced deli ham)

1 Red onion

8 oz. Mozzarella cheese

Olive oil

The first thing you want to do is cut your mushrooms into slices. I really advise doing this the night before so they dry out as much as possible. Whatever you do DO NOT WASH THEM UNDER WATER! If you do this then you'll have a big puddle of water in the middle of your pizza, it'll get soggy, and it's just bad - don't do it. Since we didn't do any prep the night before like we usually do, we cut the mushrooms, put them on a cookie sheet, and put them in the fridge, uncovered. 

If your watching a Giants game like we were, you won't be getting much done in terms of prep so we rushed our process a bit - luckily for us this is really easy. Not to mention we planned to leave to the drive-in at 8, and it was 7:00. Oops.

When you're ready, slice the veggies. You don't have to add ham or any meat if you want a vegetarian pizza, we've added some tomato and it's just as delicious. I don't eat a lot of meat so we used some Canadian Bacon for flavor (and breakfast the next day). It added just enough flavor.

He's going to chop off his fingers!!

I adore the color of these.

 Shred the cheese next...

 Take out the mushrooms...

 Here you go. Like I said, I usually like tomatoes on the pizza but this was still awesome.

Our next step was the dough (still Mike's job). Our new game plan was to make the middle of the pizza thinner so it would crisp up and the crust would be soft because it would be thicker. The best way to get this done is to spin the dough. 

We still used the baking stone (despite a disapproving girlfriend) but it was a lot better because the way we laid out the dough.

*****
How to tell if your pizza is the right size for your box:

We got a box from Mike's work so we could transport it to the drive-in. He showed me this is how you tell if it'll fit. It worked.

*****

Put the dough onto a floured cookie sheet. Add the (my) sauce, once again leaving a space around the edge for the crust...

Add the cheese and lay a thin layer of bacon. 

Add the rest of your veggies or other desired toppings. Then rub some olive oil around the crust.

Slide the pizza from the cookie sheet onto the baking stone (or not, in my opinion) but that's what we did. Once again bake for 10-15 minutes. I hope what you get is as awesome as what we got!

 Our new method worked! In fact this is exactly what we did last summer and it worked again. Maybe we shouldn't go as long without making pizza anymore. *smiles again.* The pizza was saucy and crispy. The vegetables were awesome together, too. Mike said it was almost as if the bell peppers and onions got sauteed because they game out really juicy and I agree. Letting the mushrooms air out for as long as we did helped too. We didn't have a gross puddle in the middle of our pizza. Success!

We were able to box up the pizza by 8:10 and get out the door. Mike got some pizza boxes from his work but I'm sure if you went to your local pizza place they could give you a box for a small fee or even for free. Now, go out and make your own pizzas!

Major foodie love!