It Merits a Second Try

Not sure where I was cruising on the Internet highway when I stumbled upon a recipe for breakfast pizzas created by The Minimalist Baker. (Amazing food in this blog. You'll spend hours there. Trust me.) These are Apple Streuel Breakfast Pizzas and the recipe is dairy free. I wasn't going to buy the vegan butter and milk called for in the recipe so I just substituted regular butter and the 2% milk I have on hand. While the recipe is good, it's time intensive and I would make some changes to it for my tastes. Let's dive in.

First you need to peel, core and dice two apples. Then, you put the apples, cinnamon, brown sugar and butter on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake to cook the apples.

What a wonderful fragrance this provides. Plus, you are only using the amount of butter called for in the recipe, not "well, I don't know if that's enough" that might happen if you sauteed the apples in a skillet.

Next comes the pizza dough. I used the smallest size of Pillsbury I could find and I chose whole wheat instead of white.

When I unrolled the dough, I had this rather large rectangle on my hands. The recipe calls for rolling it thin which would have increased the size. I merely patted it into a greased jelly roll pan. Their pizza dough recipe must make a smaller amount than the store bought. I'm on the fence about making the dough, but it's something I probably should try.

Once in the pan, you put your apple mixture on the dough. Here's where I'm going to have to make changes if I want to use store bought dough.

Nowhere nearly enough apples. This gets covered with a sugar, flour and butter streusel mixture.

Covered was a bit of a misnomer. It was more like smothered, given the amount of streusel mixture I made. I'm inclined to think that even with their dough recipe, there are still too few apples for the dough and streusel mixture. I want ingredients in my pizza, which is why I usually get double cheese. For me, I think doubling the apples will yield better coverage of the dough and less piles of streusel.

Another thing I will add the next time I make this, chopped walnuts. To me, streusel is not streusel unless it has nuts in it. But if you're allergic to nuts or serving this to people who are allergic to nuts, this is a great recipe.

Into the oven it goes for 12-15 minutes. I think making it on this dark cookie sheet overcooked the pizza a bit as the oven has been on for the last 30 minutes while I finished preparing the pizza for baking. It didn't need to heat up.

The end result. It tastes great and reheats very nicely. The recipe calls for a powdered sugar glaze to be drizzled over the pizza. I could have sworn I had powdered sugar, but, when I needed it, I couldn't find it. I'm not sure the pizza needs that, to be honest.

I think, with these tweaks, this will be something I can make when I have company. The labor intensive phase is peeling, coring and dicing the apples. The topping could be made ahead and kept in the fridge for assembly the next day. I loved the smell in the kitchen as this was baking. I cut it into 8 pieces. I'm not sure how it would freeze. What? Don't look at me like that. It's a great snack for evenings.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb