Fruit Pizza

Mmmm- pizza.
Mmmm- fruit.
Mmmmmmmm- fruit pizza!













I got this recipe from a co-worker several years ago and even though I've seen other versions, this is the one I use. Let's get started...


Ingredients

 

Crust

Sugar Cookie dough- homemade or store-bought in the tube. Spritz cookie recipe is tasty or a regular sugar cookie recipe with almond instead of vanilla.

Glaze
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch

Cream
8 oz cream cheese
Whipped topping- small container
1/4 cup sugar
vanilla

(Sorry this photo looks so garish.)

Fruit- your choice
Cup up fruit in manageable bite-size pieces or slices, depending on the fruit. Pineapple doesn't work real well because it leaks so much juice (which of course is why it's so good in the first place). Ditto for mandarin oranges and other canned or jarred fruit. Fresh mango over jarred or frozen.  Hold off on cutting up fruit that browns until you're putting the pizza together.

First- the crust. Press your cookie dough out into a lightly grease cookie sheet, or, as I did here, into a 9x13 casserole dish, which makes a thicker slightly chewier crust. I was taking this with me and this dish has a lid. You don't have to use all of the cookie dough in the smaller dish- just bake the extra as cookies. Someone will eat them.

You can, of course, bake the dough on a round pizza pan but that cuts up into such huge slices and I'll just be honest- this is a rich dessert. Small pieces go far. I've made this in 3 cake pans to get smaller round "pizzas" and the slices are more reasonable.

Oh- bake the dough until it's golden brown. In the casserole dish it takes 20-25 minutes. Cool completely.

While the dough is baking, make your glaze. Mix all of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Keep an eye on it and a stirring spoon in it as it thickens up suddenly and can scorch. You can fiddle around with the water amount depending on if you want a thick or thin glaze over the fruit. Let this cool completely also. If you have to go away and come back later, you can stick this in the 'frig but you'll need to gently warm it back up again as it gets pretty thick when chilled.

Once the crust and glaze have cooled, you're ready to put it all together. Make the cream filling by mixing it all together and blending well. I've reduced the amount of sugar in this recipe considerably as the whole thing is fairly rich. Spread the cream over the crust in an even layer.

Cut up your fruit. You can do a couple of things here. Coat only the fruit that browns with the glaze (make the glaze thin in this case). This gives you the option of placing each piece of fruit on the pizza in a pretty pattern. Or you can mix all the fruit together and coat it all with the glaze and then just spread it out over the cream filling all in a riot of color and festivity. I suppose there is a thesis for a psychology major lurking in which method you prefer: ordered patterns or chaos. Anyway, you can ditch the whole glaze thing and soak the fruit that browns in lemon or pineapple juice.

Finally, chill the whole pizza before you serve. Cut the pieces small-ish because did I mention that this dessert is kind of rich? But it's OK- it has fruit and fruit is good for you.

Here are a couple other pics I found on Creative Commons, just to give you a look.

by cbcs

by jeffisageek

What if you drizzled chocolate over the top? Oh my...