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| Christmas Candy Pizza |
I thought that a candy pizza should have a different crust, different sauce and different toppings. I made a picture that shows what I thought it would turn out to look like. Some early topping ideas I had were jelly beans for peppers (red & green), and coconut for cheese. The colors of the toppings reminded me of Christmas, so we made this a holiday recipe.
For the crust of my candy pizza, I didn't think it should be like a regular pizza crust. I wanted to use a pastry crust, because pastries normally have strawberry or chocolate icing on them, and sometimes candies.
I used a Pate a Choux recipe from my Daddy's chef cookbook. This is the crust for eclairs, which are made in France a lot. I chose this because I really like French things.
The recipe in the book said it makes 6 lbs, 8 oz:
Ingredients needed:
- Milk: 16 oz
- Water: 16 oz
- Bread flour: 1 lb & 8 oz
- Salt: 1 & 1/2 tsp
- Sugar: 1 & 1/2 tsp
- Butter: 1 lb
- Eggs: 2 lb & 4 oz
I didn't make the whole recipe because it would have been way more than we needed. I only wanted to make a few candy pizzas, so my dad helped me divide the amount of each ingredient by three, so we made one third of the recipe (1/3). Daddy taught me about pounds, ounces, teaspoons and cups and things to measure in.
To make the recipe, you should meet with your mom or dad and work out the numbers to make the recipe smaller so you don't have a whoooole lot of candy pizzas or one ginormous pizza.
1. Bring the milk, water, butter, sugar, and salt to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat, add the flour all at once, and stir vigorously to combine. Return the pan to medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan, about 3 minutes.
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| Don't worry, it's supposed to get really thick! |
2. Transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer and beat briefly on medium speed with a paddle attachment. Add the eggs 2 at a time, beating until smooth after each addition. Spray pans with non-stick cooking spray and add a thin layer of batter to each pan.
3. The pate a choux is ready to be baked. It should be baked at 375F for about 10 minutes, then 325F until golden brown.
I thought that cherry sours would look like pepperoni and chocolate covered raisins would look like sausage pieces. I had to squash the cherries, so Daddy brought me two spoons and I squashed them between the spoons.
My sister was happy to finally help, because we kicked her out of the kitchen earlier during all the hustle and bustle of making the pizzas.
I didn't want my sauce to be tomato sauce. It needed to be something sweet, like strawberries.
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| Sauces we considered using |
I used cranberry sauce and pumpkin butter, because I thought they would go with the holidays. I also tried the raspberry jelly, but not the yogurt or Daddy's raspberry sauce, because it had peppers in it! Gross! I liked the pumpkin butter the best. It tasted like it had cinnamon and brown sugar, and I really liked that! (I really like pumpkin pie too.)
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| Spreading the raspberry sauce onto a crust |
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| It looks like tomato sauce... |
I used shredded coconut for cheese, because it was white and looked like cheese!
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| Mama mia! We finally made a pizza in this pizzeria. |
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| My sister Selah helped with the toppings. |
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| We also tried using chopped "turtles" as sausage. |
But the most Christmasy one was when we chopped up red and green "fruit slice" candies to look like peppers. I guess my Daddy finally got me to like peppers on a pizza. :)
