Thursday, January 26, 2012

Pizza (and a Craft) for Everyone!


Do you ever feel like you're loosing your mind? Yesterday, I came across a fabulous idea for making homemade Easy Bake Oven pizza, using refrigerator biscuit crust. Today, I can't find the link again to save my life. It wouldn't be so bad, except the site also mentioned making Easy Bake Oven monkey bread, and I really wanted to check that out.

The pizzas turned out terrific, though. And, true to their name, they are very easy to make.

Just pat down the biscuit dough (half a biscuit if you are using "grands") into a greased, Easy Bake cake pan...


...spread on a spoonful of sauce (we used pizza, spaghetti, or whatever)...


...sprinkle on cheese (we used shredded string cheese)...


...and add a single topping. I splurged and picked up some mini pepperonis, but almost any flat topping would do. You just don't want it to get too bulky, or it won't fit in the Easy Bake.


Place it into the preheated oven for the amount of time listed on the biscuit packaging (15 minutes in our case)...


...for a perfect little pizza.


My intention was to have the younger girls make a couple, for before lunch appetizers (also known as a mid-morning snack)...

...but all of the children decided they wanted to make one, so we switched over to a cookie sheet, and the big oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (another idea from the website I can no longer locate).


While we waited for our pizzas to bake, I read the children Pizza for the Queen by Nancy Castaldo. It's a fun retelling of the history of Pizza Margherita, the basil, cheese and tomato pizza made in honor of the Italian queen in 1889.

In fact, there's even a recipe for Pizza Margherita at the back of the book, as well as some fun pizza facts. Did you know, for instance, that Americans eat 350 slices of pizza per second?

We already had our pizza for the day, so instead of trying out the recipe, we followed up the book with a cardboard, and paper pizza craft from babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, oh my! via Watcha Making Wednesday at The Ramblings and Adventures of a S.A.H.M....


...that called for cardboard crusts, paper toppings, and red paint (we opted for red colored glue) for sauce. The girls helped cut, and scrunch (for the sausage) the toppings.


Then, they happily put together pizzas, that might not have the Italian color scheme of Pizza Margherita...


...but our certainly fit for a queen.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with stART(story + ART) at A Mommy's Adventures, and the History and Geography link-up at All Things Beautiful.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

LOVE those paper pizzas! What a great idea for a study! My kids LOVE pizza!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

This is an excellent idea! I wish daughter liked pizza. No melted cheese for her :)

Unknown said...

So cool! Love this idea.

Brittney said...

We made personal pizzas earlier this week, but I love the idea of doing a pizza craft too! I will have to file that one away for next time!

Ticia said...

We need to make pizzas again. I keep putting it on my menu plan for the week and it doesn't happen.

Christy Killoran said...

Fun! The pizza fact did not surprise me!

momworkdc said...

Here's a fun looking list of recipes! My girls loved their Easy Bake Oven almost as much as I loved mine when I was a little girl!!

http://www.squidoo.com/Easy-Bake-Oven-1#module13626103

Leah Courtney said...

Very cute! My daughter still won't let me get rid of her Easy Bake oven, so we might as well make some good use of it. :-)

Cindy said...

So fun! I know my kids would enjoy the cooking and the crafting! Pizza Margherita is my favorite! We aren't able to plant much of a garden, but last year, we did plant a roma tomato plant and some basil...and used it to make Pizza Margherita! I definitely gotta find this book when we do it again this summer! Thanks for the fabulous idea!

Phyllis said...

This is great! We don't have an Easy Bake oven, but I still love the idea. I am going to check out that book. It looks very interesting. We are going to be making cardboard pizzas when we come back from vacation! Thanks for linking up.

Eddie said...

I'll have to dig that book out and let the kids loose on that craft! I think I may still have the DownloadNGo pizza unit around somewhere, too....hmm...I sense a one-week pizza unit study coming(we'll take any excuse to eat pizza)!

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