Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale, and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen I'm going to share
with you my desert pizza.
Now, in a recent pizza video, I made a BBQ chicken pizza here recently that if you haven't
seen, make sure you check out.
I asked you in that video what pizza you wanted to see next, and I have gotten an overwhelming
amount of people ask for desert pizza.
So today, we're basically going to be making a giant sugar cookie, then we're going to
just spread on top - spread some cream cheese and frosting kind of thing on top, and then
top it with beautiful fresh fruit.
And It is beautiful to look at.
It's delicious to eat and it's really fun to make, so get the kids involved, let them
pick their own fruit that they want to put on it.
It's just a really fun activity to do as a family or if you're like me, a really cooking
- or a food/cooking nerd, then you would enjoy doing these things by yourself as well.
The ingredients you'll need for the basic - you know for the giant sugar cookie is all
purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, granulated sugar, some unsalted butter
that has been softened at room temperature, an egg, and some vanilla paste.
That's it.
At this point you want to make sure your oven is preheated to 375F, and what I have here
is a 12 inch pizza pan - or this is a non-stick pizza pan, it's really nice and thin.
I have this sprayed with some non-stick spray, and it's ready to go.
I've got my big mixer on, fitted with my paddle attachment, and we are going to get going
on creaming together the butter and sugar.
Just going to get my butter out of there, it's nice and soft at room temperature, get
my sugar in there.
Don't worry if my sugar looks a little bit lumpy, I just opened up a new pack - package
- and I didn't want to sift it.
Going to cream those two together really well and then we'll go on adding the next ingredient.
Just going to add my egg and vanilla paste.
You can also use vanilla extract, of course.
I just have a tinsy wincy weeny bit of vanilla paste left, I did get a new bottle though,
and I wanted to use this up so I can get rid of the container.
Just make sure you scrape the sides, you can see my vanilla paste went all over the place,
but that's ok, it'll all end up at the right spot, you'll have to scrape the sides a bit,
just because it gets stuck on the sides of the bowl and I want to get it all mixed in
there well.
Alright, just going to quickly mix together my dry ingredients
And I am going to add these in, and just mix everything
together until it's combined.
Just getting all my cookie dough out of the bowl, and now I have a little bowl of flour
here because I want to flour my hands, otherwise they're going to stick really bad, so you
just keep flouring your hands and then you press the dough into your prepared pizza pan,
but make sure that you keep flouring your hands because otherwise they're going to stick
really, really bad.
Try to make this as even as possible, and now you'll notice that we didn't roll this
out because we are not using pizza dough, we're just making something that looks like
pizza, and there are so many different variations you can do this, I mean technically my cinnamon
roll pizza is considered a desert pizza and that's made with pizza crust.
I'm also going to show you how to make Nutella pizza in the future and that requires pizza
crust as well, so there's lots of variations of it, but this I think is the most common
and it's one of the - you know it's delicious, so I wanted to share it with you.
Now this is ready, I'm going to pop this into my oven that's been preheated to 375F for
about 10 to 12 minutes, or until it's beautiful lightly golden brown, and then we're going
to let it cool completely before we top this with a gorgeous creamy topping.
My cookie base was in the oven for about 12 minutes and it looks magnificent.
I have let it cool completely, you want to make sure you do that, otherwise the frosting
will just kind of melt all over the place.
To make the frosting, you're going to need some cream cheese that is softened at room
temperature, some confectioners sugar, a slash - splash of vanilla, and what I have here
is my homemade lemon curd, if you don't want to use lemon curd, or you don't have it on
hand or you don't want to make a special trip to the supermarket just to get it or to make
it from scratch, just add a zest of a lemon a little bit of lemon juice, maybe like a
teaspoon or so, and it will do the trick - just wow.
Here I've got my fruit that I'm going to top this off with.
I've got some kiwi, I've got some star fruit.
I've got blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries, and a couple of extra.
Ok!
Let's go on making our frosting, or whatever you want to call it, I guess our sauce for
our desert pizza.
I've got my cream cheese here and it's really important that it is softened to room temperature,
otherwise you're not going to be able to spread it on, and it will just be a giant mess.
I'm going to add in the confectioners sugar, a little tiny splash of vanilla - not a whole
lot, you don't need too much.
and then we're going to add it the lemon curd.
This is my homemade lemon curd which I have shared with you in a previous episode and
it is just phenomenal and very easy to do, and - best lemon curd you'll make, I promise!
Mix this all together until you have a really lovely and creamy micsure - micsure?!
mixture!
Pour our sauce evenly over the top, going to spread this on really nicely, I've got
a little offset spatula here just to make the job easier, and then just spread it even
and smear it all over, and the smell is fantastic by the way, you can smell the lemon curd,
you can - don't worry if you've got bits and pieces of the powdered sugar that hasn't blended
in together really well, it's all going to get covered with the fruit anyway.
Don't give yourself a nervous breakdown wondering why your powdered sugar has bits all over
the place, it just does.
As you can see, mine does too, and I'm perfectly okay with that!
Just spreading this evenly, kind of from edge to edge, probably should leave a little border,
like a normal pizza, right?!
And now it's just about decorating, I'm just going to cut off the tops of my strawberries,
and then just slice my strawberries, just - you can do this in any pattern your heart
desires, I just mix and match, I'm going to do probably just a row of strawberries, and
then just mix things up and you can do this with any kind of fruit that you prefer.
You can use just one kind of fruit, one kind of berry.
You can use bananas, although do be careful because bananas turn brown, so you might want
to toss them in a little bit of sugar beforehand but really, the world is your pickle.
You can put in some orange slices on here, orange segments, that would be really lovely
as well.
You know, it's completely up to you!
I just love a lot of color.
I love how this looks.
I love that green against the blackberries and the raspberries and the blueberries just
looks beautiful, so that's why I do it this way, but by all means don't feel like you
have to stick to what I'm using just because that's what I'm using.
Use what you got, use what you like, and use what's - you know - available.
I think that's how I'm going to keep mine for now, but I do want to sneak in one little
piece of kiwi right there, I feel like that just - I don't know, I just feel like that
looks better.
What do you guys think?
How are my decorating skills?!
Do you approve?
Now you know that it took me - It took quite some, some, like some meditating in my head
in order to do this patiently and make this look really pretty, because normally - you
know - I'd just throwing everything on there, and make it look beautiful because the fruit
is beautiful, but I took some time, and I'm really proud of how it looks, so now I need
to cut myself a slice, for the hard work, you know?
Going to cut, umm, I really hate to mess up this fruit but you know, a girl's got to do
what a girl's got to do.
Woah, whoah..
Look at that!
Look at the crust, holds together really beautifully.
A lovely layer of our sauce, not too thick.
Beautiful fresh fruit.
That's a pretty beautiful desert pizza, wouldn't you say?
I really love that.
Okay, I'm going to get this very first bite right here.
I was going to do this, because I'm so used to burning the roof of my mouth.
Mmm, that!
See, it's a feast for the eyes, it's a feast for the palate as well, that cheesecake, cheesecake?
cream cheese topping tastes like cheesecake, tastes like a really beautiful cheesecake
kind of flavored - it has a cheesecake kind of flavor to it which I love.
The sugar cookie isn't too sweet and it's balanced really, really well both of those,
the cream and the cookie, is balanced really, really well from the fresh fruit, which is
why I don't put a glaze or anything on top of my fruit tart, or my fruit desert pizza,
on top of my fruit, because in that way you're getting sweet, sweet, sweet.
I want sweet, sweet and fresh, slightly tartness from fruit.
That's kind of like the perfect balance in my opinion.
I'm going to slice Joe a little slice, and then I'm going to wrap the rest up, and tomorrow
I'll take it to my sister-in-law's and I think we're all going to enjoy it with the kids,
because it's really delicious with a nice cup of coffee and the kids are going to go
nuts for it.
Go to laurainthekitchen.com to get this recipe, hey let me know what recipe - what pizza you
want to see next, I mean I'm definitely going to be going and checking the comment section
for future pizza inspirations because they all come from you.
Hope you guys have enjoyed spending time with me, and I'll see you next time.
Bye Bye!