Happy 4th of July!

Lots of red, white, and blue food has been circulating around the Internet lately ahead of the holiday. I saw some cute dipped strawberries with white chocolate and blue sugar, but nothing really caught my imagination until I saw a marbled red, white, and blue cake. It seemed simple but fun to make. Here's the original recipe from Tablespoon. Frankly, it's more of a process than a recipe, because the original relies on a box cake mix and store-bought frosting. That's just not how I roll these days though. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in those pints of frosting? It's a lot more than butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt, let me tell you.

Anyway, based on my desire to make this cake (and, more importantly, for saving our bacon during the recent power outage), I invited my BFF Amanda and her boyfriend Brandon over to cook out on the 4th. I made hamburgers, roasted rosemary potatoes, sangria, and, of course, "firecracker" cake. I wanted to get some sparklers for the top, but I just didn't get it done. The original was in a bundt pan, and I don't own one yet, so I used a regular cake pan instead.

my firecracker cake interpretation

What I learned is that it takes a whoooole lotta food coloring to color cake batter (and frosting) a strong red and a strong blue. Because I was rushing a little, and because I didn't realize it would take SO much food coloring, my cake came out a little more tribute to the '80s than a tribute to America. A little more pink than red, really. But, it tasted great, so that's what really matters. I used an amazing frosting recipe that I got from my college friend Lauren's blog, which is great- she's such a foodie. Her recipe is for whoopie pie filling, but it made enough to frost the 12-inch cake with a little bit left over. This is some of the best frosting I've ever made or eaten, so you should try it for your next dessert that requires frosting- cake, cookies, cupcakes, whatever.

a shot of the marbled interior

This would be fun in a number of colors for kids' birthdays, etc. based on the same principle of coloring white cake. Just be prepared for a lot of food coloring and a lot of stirring. 

Feeding Friendship: Pizza Pizza!

This time around, Veronica chose pizza as our cooking challenge. I was so happy, since pizza is one of the things I make when I'm too tired to deal with making something complicated. Her reference to dessert pizza gave me a flashback to birthday parties at Pizza Hut in the late '80s where the buffet always had a dessert pizza topped with fruit. So, I decided to do one of each- savory and dessert pizzas this time around.

My go-to easy pizza secret is using Indian naan flat bread as the crust. Wegman's makes good naan, and I like using the roasted garlic variety for pizzas. The naan is about as big as your head, so it makes a good personal sized pizza that can be customized to your taste. It's extremely simple to make, and you can make any or all elements from scratch- or not. First, pre-heat your oven to 350. Then I slap the naan on a baking sheet and cover it with pizza sauce (Wegman's makes "to go" sauce that isn't canned, so I use that) and shredded mozzarella. Slices of a traditional mozzarella work well too.

most of my ingredients for semi-homemade weeknight pizza

ready for toppings!

Now the toppings are up to you. We like pepperoni, each with a different secondary topping. We both like pesto and chicken with toasted pine nuts, which also goes well on naan. 

Olives for me, onions for George

Once you're done topping and the oven is hot, pop in your pizzas for about 15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted. I like to turn off the oven and use the broiler for just 2-3 minutes on low to crisp up the pepperoni. This requires constant supervision! Do NOT turn on the broiler and then go feed the cat or clean something or otherwise wander off, because your delicious pizza will scorch. Keep an eye on it and take it out before it gets too brown. 

ready! 

mmm! nom nom naan

For my dessert pizza I thought about getting very fancy and making a crust out of cinnamon roll dough and topping it with cherries and sugar glaze to sort of re-create the Pizza Hut experience I remember. That involved a lot of guesswork, though, so I got inspired when I saw this Pillsbury recipe on Pinterest for a spring "pizza" made out of a big cookie. I didn't make this exact thing due to my pathological need to make baked goods from scratch (as opposed to dinner, apparently), but I cribbed the idea. I halved this recipe for sugar cookie bars from A Little Bit Crunchy A Little Bit Rock 'n Roll and put the dough in a pizza pan instead of rectangular baking pan (this is not a Little Caeser's cookie pizza). 

thick sugar cookie dough

dough spread into the pizza pan

Around 10 minutes later I pulled the cookie pizza out of the oven, just as the edges were beginning to brown. It looks remarkably similar on film, but was in fact now a real cookie...just a really big one. 

cooked, I swear

As the pizza cooked, I made the vanilla frosting called for in the bar recipe. It was ready just about the time the cookie was done, but I had to wait a while to frost it so the hot cookie wouldn't melt the frosting. You can obviously use pre-made frosting too, but after looking at the ingredient list on that stuff, you may not want to. From this point you can do tons of cute things for toppings from sprinkles to spring (or any holiday) M&Ms, to crushed Cadbury candy eggs, etc etc. I just had plain chocolate chips around, so that's what I used, but the holiday candies would be very cute too. I don't think I could bring myself to do jelly beans, but whatever floats your boat. Here's the finished product:

chocolate chip "pizza"

close-up!

Try a slice! It's delish!

All in all, my little pizza experiment worked pretty well. The half recipe of both dough and frosting filled up the pan and made a soft, buttery cookie crust for the pizza. The sky is the limit on dessert pizza, just like the real thing!