Sweet pizza

My family loves (and begs for) fruit pizza. And because they love the sugar cookie topped “pizza” with a cream cheese filling and fresh fruit and glaze, I’ve often wondered what other kind of dessert pizza I could make for them.

In the last few weeks, my daughter and I have been scouring websites looking for seasonal recipes for fall and Halloween food columns. In that search, I saw several dessert pizzas and knew it would be easy to decorate them to reflect the season.

For a few years now, I’ve wanted to try a pizza with a chocolate chip pizza crust, so I chose a Pillsbury recipe for chocolate-peanut butter cookie pizza to make last weekend. Peanut butter and chocolate is a favorite combination with my family, so I knew I couldn’t miss with this recipe. I was right!

The dessert is very simple to put together. It starts with the cookie crust. I used slice and bake cookies on an inexpensive pizza pan I bought for my fruit pizza. The aluminum one-use pans would work as well. You have to work with the cookie dough to get it to spread evenly across the pan. But the body heat from your hands will help warm up the dough so it’s more pliable.

I overcooked my cookie crust; that’s what happens when you forget to set the timer! It didn’t really burn, but the crust was darker than I would have wanted. Anyway, it turns out that the more firm, crisp crust was a good thing. Even the second day we had the pizza, the crust was firm and not soggy.

Mix the cream cheese/ peanut butter topping for your pizza while the crust is baking and spread it on after the cookie has cooled.

Pillsbury suggests drizzling with hot fudge topping (we warmed ours first) and topping with chopped peanuts. We also added yellow, orange and brown Reese’s Pieces to ours to reflect fall decorations. Fall M&Ms would be pretty on the pizza as well.

We couldn’t wait for Anna to photograph this dessert so we could give it a try. It was so good. Rich, but delicious. You can feed many people with this recipe (Pillsbury says 12) because a small slice is really all you need.


Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Pizza

• 1 roll (16.5 oz) refrigerated chocolate chip cookies
• 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 3/4 cup hot fudge topping
• 1/4 cup chopped peanuts**

Heat oven to 350 degrees. In ungreased 12-inch pizza pan, break up dough. With floured fingers, press dough evenly in bottom of pan to form crust.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, in medium bowl, beat cream cheese, peanut butter, powdered sugar and milk until smooth. Fold in whipped topping.

Spread 1/2 cup of the fudge topping over cooled crust.* Spread peanut butter mixture over top. Drizzle with remaining 1/4 cup fudge topping. Sprinkle with peanuts. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes or until serving time. Cut into wedges or squares.

Pillsbury


* We did not put the fudge topping on the crust, only drizzled a little of it on the top.

**We added Reese’s Pieces to the top of the pizza