Recipe: Pizza Cups

This isn't a low fat diet recipe, but I wanted to start sharing the recipes I share on my other blog here, also.

So awhile back a friend of mine posted on her facebook that they made "Pizza Cupcakes"  ...  I was all, "what the heck is pizza cupcakes??"  ...  so she messages me back and said "it's little pizza things made in cupcake tins" ...  eh... interesting.

She sent me the recipe, I printed it out and gave it to Dennis ....  he made the initial "what the heck...." comment but then did the same thing I did.... huh ... interesting....

So .... after that, I have no clue what happened to the recipe and I couldn't just reprint it off because it didn't go in my FB email, it was just a message ....  so there was no record of it!  BUGGER right!?

Well, when I decided to "Meal Plan" ...  I was looking for easy amazing recipes that would be easy to make the kids for lunch.  I mean, I still have about a month of making daily lunch for the kids (before school starts) and just wanted to make things interesting....  hot dogs, peanut butter, etc... it gets boring after awhile, even for me....

So I just happened to come across another recipe for the same type of thing, only this one was just called "Pizza Cups" ...

What it is - is - biscuit dough, in a muffin pan, shaped around the muffin tin, filled with pizza sauce, cheese, a little basil , and pepperoni ....  easy enough right?   And it was so good!!!   So I'll share the recipe, and then share the little things I did or would do differently ...

What You Need:

* Muffin Tin 

* Cooking Spray

* Kitchen Sissors

* 1 Tube of refrigerated biscuit dough (I used Grands)

* Pizza Sauce

* Mozzarella Cheese, diced or shredded

* Pepperoni Slices (reg. or turkey) 

* Parmesan Cheese, shredded

* Dried Basil and/or Oregano

Instructions:

* Preheat oven to 375 degrees ... and spray the muffin tin with cooking spray

* After opening the biscuits, one is to thick for this, so you take your kitchen scissors and you clip around the middle of the biscuit until you have it cut in half.

* You take your twin biscuit halves and you press it around a muffin tin.  (I found that sometimes the middle was a little thin, so you have to press out and re-form the dough a little to get the right consistency in the middle - at the bottom of the muffin tin area -)...  repeat until the muffin tin is full (or you run out of dough)

* Once you have your dough in each of your muffin tins, you then start to put some sauce in the bottom.

* Then you add some cheese (mozzarella)

* Add your pepperoni

* Sprinkle a little more cheese on top (Parm) and then sprinkle a little bit of Basil and/or Oregano...

* Place in the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is melted.

Here is my picture of different steps ...   The first row is done until the pepperoni, the second row until the first layer of cheese, and the other two have just the sauce in the bottom...

 This one has the cheese on top, I sprinkled the basil under the pepperoni ....

 Here is a lovely finished product. 

Now I didn't use Mozzarella or Parm... I just used a shredded cheese blend, because I forgot to specifically get Mozz and Parm....  Which was good, but next time, I definitely want to get Mozz and Parm... specifically ...

The other problem that I ran into, was that I put about a quarter sized puddle of sauce in the bottom, but I don't think that was enough, so next time, I'll use a little more.  It'll mean when the kids bite into it, it'll be messer ... but I will take that chance.  It just wasn't saucy enough for me, but different people like different amounts of sauce, so ...  experiment a little.  I just know I'm not going to be afraid to use a little more sauce (or cheese for that matter) next time...

The last bit of advice is that my first batch (15 minutes) was over cooked.  I got busy with my kids and next thing I knew the timer was going off so I asked my oldest to get it out while I finished doing what I was doing....  when I got into the kitchen, I saw them a little more then golden brown and only moments from being burnt.  So the next batch, I put them in for 12 minutes and they came out PERFECT!!  So be sure to watch your first batch through the last few minutes of cooking time to figure out the perfect cooking time for your oven.

Other then that! ENJOY!!!  Please let me know if you try it and what you think!

Let's Try This Again!!

So ..  Dennis has been :::cough::::gaining-weight:::cough,cough,hack:::: (due to meds, really)  ... so we decided last month to join the YMCA.  We're excited to work out together. 

Dennis went in to get his plan in action 3 weeks ago, I was told I had to get a doctors release saying I could work out ..... it was heartbreaking because I wanted to get to it.  However, I've been suffering a huge flare up of my CFS and had to go in for a medicine change.  I missed a dose last night of my meds, I fell asleep ... and I can definitely say I can feel the difference ...  but we must go on!  I had the DR. sign away my life so that I can start to get on the road to the new me!  I had my appointment tonight with my health and fitness specialist - I have my plan in place.  The only instructions my DR gave me was to start out very light and slow, and to work my way up .... so I have walking, stairs or bike, and then some stuff in the weight room...   I saw a Zumba class today and I think that I'll try that sometime after I get my cardio tolerance built up... 

Right now we're doing swim class with with the babies, Noah's in swim class and so is Cal.  They are really starting to enjoy swimming but Nathan gets super cold because he has no fat on him.  However, I think I might go in and swim laps sometimes too....  We'll see :)  Been a loooooooooooong time since I've swam laps.

However, my last weigh in with the DR.... I was down another ten pounds and I'm soooooooooooooo freaking excited about that!!!