Pepperoni Pizza Bites

I’ve been seeing these little pizza dippers around Pinterest and other blogs.  YUM.

But, I haven’t been so keen on making my own dough lately.  Just think of it as me doing my part to conserve energy in Japan.  If I made dough, I would have to knead it.  If I were kneading dough, I would get hot.  If I got hot, I would have to turn on the air conditioning.  See what a good person I am?

Okay, I am lazy.  My kids were hungry and I didn’t want to knead and wait for dough to rise…..so I improvised.

These little bites are easy to make and fun to eat.  I did pepperoni bites, but I have visions of filling them with some veggies and sausage too.  Serve with some marinara sauce and you will have an empty platter as soon as they hit the table.

Pepperoni Pizza Bites

Recipe adapted from Annie’s Eats

Ingredients:

·        One pizza worth of pizza dough…buy it or make it…your choice

·        8 oz shredded mozzarella cheese

·        1/3 cup diced pepperoni

·        2 Tbls butter

·        1 tsp crushed garlic

·        1 tsp parsley flakes

·        Parmesan Cheese (I actually forgot this, but they were still good.)

·        Marinara sauce for dipping

Step 1:  Make your dough.

Step 2:  Mix your shredded cheese and pepperoni

Step 3:  Flatten tablespoon sized pieces of dough on your hand or flat surface.  Use flour if dough gets sticky.  Place a bit of the cheese & pepperoni on top, like this…..

Step 4:  Wrap the filling inside the dough, creating a little goody filled dough ball.  Place into a pie plate.

Step 5: Melt the butter and mix with the garlic and parsley.  Brush mixture onto dough balls.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Step 6:  Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees or until tops begin to brown.  Let cool for a couple minutes.

Serve with marinara sauce for dipping.

Baked Sugar Donut Muffins

Just a lazy long labor day weekend here at our house.  The girlies wanted me to slave over some cinnamon rolls. I had to think about that one for exactly a nano-second…….NO.

So as not to make the poor starving babies think that I don’t love them, I whipped up some of these little sugared cuties. 

Much much easier than sweating over cinnamon rolls and much much healthier than fried Homemade Donuts, they were a hit!  The ones pictured here are covered with plain white sugar, but cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar are good too.
 



Sugar Donut Muffins

(recipe adapted from Baking Bites)

 



3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk (low fat is fine)

2 tsp melted butter

1 tsp vanilla                                                                                                     
1/2 cup sugar, for rolling

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a muffin tin with cooking spray or vegetable oil.  In a large bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light in color.   In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Pour into egg mixture and stir to combine. Pour in vegetable oil, milk and vanilla extract.  Divide batter evenly into a mini-muffin pan. (Recipe will also fill about 10 regular muffin cups ¾ full.) Bake for 15 to 18 minutes.  When muffins are done, lightly brush the top of each with some melted butter, remove from pan, and roll around in remaining sugar.  
   

Makes 24 mini-muffins.

Looks good, no?  Okay then, how about dipped in vanilla icing?