Pizza Pockets

Guest blog by Molly Fairchild:

I recently hosted a Pampered Chef Party with my friend Julie Hunhoff (more about her later) for the sole purpose of getting myself one of their new items, the Brownie Pan!  What makes this so special you ask?  Well, each square is separate from the other squares so that the brownies (or whatever you choose to make) has its own edges!  Isn’t that brilliant????  Now, I am not a sweets junkie like some people I know but I was really excited to try some of the more savory dishes that were in the cookbook that Julie sent me after I purchased my Brownie Pan.  Especially the Deep Dish Pizzas because who doesn’t love pizza????

I’ll post the recipe from the ones that Julie sent me, even though I didn’t really follow it, well, at all.

Mini Deep Dish Pizzas:

1 pkg Pillsbury Pizza Crust

1 pkg Turkey breakfast sausage patties

Small can of chopped black olives

½ jar spaghetti sauce

Mozzarella cheese

Using a rolling pin, roll out pizza dough and cut into 12 squares; place Brownie Pan wells.  Cook the turkey breakfast sausage patties in the microwave.  Break up the patties and place in wells on top of crust.  Open up olives and place in wells.  Put spaghetti sauce in each well.  Grate cheese and sprinkle liberally on top.  Bake at 375F for 15-20 min.  The outside squares make cook the fastest, the four in the center may need just a tad more time.

So pretty much the only part I followed was the temp and time…sort of.  I started with reduced fat crescent rolls.  Mistake number one.  Crescent roll dough is triangular.  The Brownie Pan wells are square.  I made it work though.  Unlike the recipe in the PDF file, I tried to get the crust up on the walls of the wells too because I wanted to make pizza pockets. 

Then I took some pizza sauce and put some in each well, followed by some mini pepperonis, and some reduced fat mozzarella cheese.  For three of them, instead of pizza sauce, I put in a little bit of 1/3 reduced fat cream cheese, some diced chilies, some diced Canadian Bacon, reduced fat cheddar, and reduced fat mozzarella cheese.  My friends and I call this the “Sleazy Cheesy”.  (Check out Lyndee's version with flatout bread in a previous post).  I wanted to try a few out to see if they would work but didn’t want to commit to a whole pan. 

To make my “pockets”, after I had filled all the wells with the “toppings”, I took what I had left of the crescent roll dough and covered each well with it.  I then brushed some Extra Virgin Olive Oil on them and sprinkled them with my Parmesan Garlic Seasoning from Pampered Chef. 

All in all, putting the little pizzas together was a little time consuming but I think a lot of that had to do with trying to use triangular pieces of dough in a square well.  I got quicker as I went on and figured out the best way to get the dough in the wells without having to re-roll it out.  And, as I shared with my brave friends who came to try my creation, I am not a thoughtful cook because I left my package of cheese on my pre-heating oven and sort of melted some of it.  Ooops.  I’m sure that’s just a Molly-type mistake though. 

I put the pan in the oven, which had been heating up to 375F and chatted with my friends while the little pizza pockets were baking.  I opened the oven door to check on them after about five minutes and they looked like they were getting close to being done.  But wait!  The directions said 15- 20 min!  So, after waving a towel by the smoke alarm which went off a couple of times, I closed the oven door because they hadn’t cooked as long as they were supposed to yet.  After a couple of more minutes, we came to a consensus that it was now or never, so we took them out after about 8 min in the oven.  As you can see, they got a bit burnt.  But they still tasted pretty good! 

I decided next time I would use actual pizza dough, due to the geometry of it and also because I thought the crescent rolls were a little sweet.  Although, it did work really well with the Sleazy Cheesy ones.  And I would not cook them as long, obviously.  But other than those things, I would call it a successful adventure!!!

Now, if you would like the opportunity to get yourself a Brownie Pan so you can try this recipe or those Naughty Word Brownies, contact Julie Hunhoff to host your own show!  If you mention that you heard about her through this blog, she’ll give you a free gift for hosting, along with the free items and half-price items you’ll get based on your sales!!!  Just tell her that Testing Trendy….1, 2, 3 sent you!

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