HOMEMADE PIZZA NIGHT + DELISH NO YEAST DOUGH RECIPE

I need to talk to y'all about pizza. My family could have pizza night once a week (and often times, we do haha). Anybody else? I guess it's pretty fitting that we moved to the pizza capital of the US - Chicago. Deep dish pizza really is all that it's talked up to be, guys. If you are ever in the Chicago area you n e e d to try Lou Malnati's or Geno's East for some amazing Chicago style pizza. It's so different than your regular pizzas out there. But that's not what this post is about. ;) It's about the fantastic pizza you can make at home!

I have made homemade pizzas in the past that were just average. Too much plain-tasting sauce. The crust was soggy in the middle. Not a whole lot of flavor. But THIS pizza was way way tastier and so easy, and definitely not average! My husband (who is a big pizza l o v e r) could not stop raving about my homemade pizza on Friday night. That's the best feeling as a wife!! And I do have to admit, I was really surprised myself because I have always been a canned pizza crust kind of girl but this was BETTER. 

What was so different about this pizza, you ask? 

The first thing we loved more about this pizza was the dough! 1) You don't need yeast!!! (so many praise hands), 2) it was fluffy and fully baked in the middle, 3) golden crispy on the bottom (not burnt or white/underbaked), and 4) it didn't taste like flavorless cardboard (as homemade dough sometimes does). Also, you don't have to pre-bake the dough before putting toppings on which is just another plus.

The second thing we loved was the sauce and it was so simple to put together. It was the most delicious, flavorful companion to that perfect dough. Here's how to make it!

HOMEMADE PIZZA SAUCE

Ingredients

1 jar of marinara sauce 

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp Italian seasoning

Directions

1. Bring all ingredients to a simmer in a sauce pan. 

Note: I actually had about 1/4 cup of sauce left over that I didn't put on the pizza. My husband likes to have a marinara dipping sauce so it worked perfectly to have some left over! Just use your own judgement on whether to use it all or not based on the size of your pizza - be generous with covering the dough minus about 1 inch around the edges, but as a general rule less is more here. 

NO YEAST PIZZA DOUGH RECIPE

Ingredients

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup milk (plus 2 tbsp more if your dough seems too dry to combine)

1/4 cup room temp/softened unsalted butter  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Prepare baking sheet or pizza pan with nonstick spray.

2. Combine all dough ingredients in a bowl and mix until dough ball forms. I like to use my hands to crumble up the butter into pea-sized crumbles of butter + dough. (This is something I learned from my mother-in-law when making homemade biscuits. ;)

3. Roll dough ball out onto a floured surface with a rolling pin. This dough can be quite sticky at first! I rolled mine to be about 1/4 inch thick. (I didn't have the prettiest edges on this pizza, but I'll make that better next time!)

4. Move dough onto prepared baking sheet or pizza pan. Now it's time to add your pizza sauce, cheese, and toppings. 

*For toppings I used my homemade pizza sauce, a blend of Mexican and mozzarella shredded cheese, diced onions, green peppers, and pepperonis.*

5. Bake for 15 minutes until underneath dough is golden brown. 

And that's it! This recipe has officially been added to our favorites list and I can't wait to try it with other toppings. Stock up on your favorite pizza toppings and get this pizza cooking on your next Friday night, guys. You won't be disappointed!

Emily 

Christmas Cookies + BEST Icing for Decorating

I love love love to bake. When I was living at home with my parents, the idea of baking always sounded fun but since no one in my family was an avid baker, we didn't usually keep a ton of baking ingredients on hand. So I would always talk myself out of trying to bake something new. 

When I got married, though, I quickly grew to love and look forward to baking. Mostly because I was baking for my husband, now! It was also pretty resourceful too, because those brown bananas needed to be put to good use, right? In the last few years baking has become something I do regularly and love to do. And when you have two boys under your roof, they will never EVER resent having a Mom who loves to bake! 

Finding a fun set of cookie cutters at Dollar Tree the other day was really what made me want to decorate Christmas cookies, so that's what we did this past Thursday. This was the first time Charlie got to "help" use cookie cutters and he was ALL about it. Not so much the cookie cutting, but definitely the squishing of dough and sneaking handfulls into his mouth faster than we could catch. Seriously, try baking with a one year old soon...you will be amazed at how fast they are at making a mess and sneak-eating.

The gingerbread mix we used was wonderfully prepared by the one and only Betty Crocker. They turned out more like a soft baked cookie than a crunchy gingersnap.While I usually love to make my other favorite cookies homemade, I definitely appreciated the ease of a pre-made mix since we were going all out for our cookie decorating shebang with a toddler included.

BUTTERCREAM JUST LIKE ROYAL ICING 

Royal icing is all the hype right now, but I'm still a little weirded out about using a raw egg like that, and feeding it to my little one. So we made a batch of buttercream and it ended up being the most royal-icing like buttercream I have EVER seen. You'll notice on my cookies (especially the Grandma Snowman) how the frosting smoothed out similar to royal icing. So if you are looking for the royal icing effect with a classic buttercream taste, I would definitely recommend this recipe.

Ingredients:

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1-2 tablespoons milk


Directions:

1. Start by mixing 2 cups of the powdered sugar and softened butter with a mixer. (You will add in the third cup of powdered sugar later.)

2. Add the vanilla extract and 1-2 tablespoons of milk to the mixture and incorporate with the mixer again.

3. Add in the last cup of powdered sugar, little by little, mixing after each addition. If the mixture is becoming super thick, do not add anymore of the powdered sugar. It's okay if you don't use all of the last cup of powdered sugar. In order to achieve a "royal icing-like" consistency, you will want the frosting to be slightly thinner than normal buttercream would be. I found that using the mixer for a minute or two also allowed for a smoother texture on the icing.

4. Once the consistency is right, add in food color of your choice for decorating!

My plate

Husband's plate

I hope you all get a chance to do some cookie decorating this year! We cut and baked the cookies together as a family, but once Charlie was in bed for the night we had a cookie decorating "date" at the kitchen table and it's one of my favorite holiday memories so far this year. It doesn't have to be fancy (I used Dollar Tree items and pre-made mix! ;), it only has to be fun!


Merry Christmas, friends!