(Pizza) Muffins, they're not just for breakfast anymore!

Well, I did it. I made pizza muffins. It's amazing how a blizzard, and impromptu Superbowl party at my house, and no trips to the supermarket will spark the cooking imagination. Ok, fine, I have mentioned pizza muffins here before so I guess that wasn't imaginative, but Rob and I had homemade pizza the night before so I wasn't really in the mood to "just" have pizza again. I'm not sure if these are anything like what I vaguely recall making with my Dad, but they got rave reviews at the Superbowl party so I'm going to go with it.

First, you will need the dough recipe from here and the marinara recipe from here. You will also need grated mozzarella cheese, italian seasoning, crushed red pepper, olive oil, a muffin tin capable of making 12 muffins and Pam (or something like Pam). Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Take your dough and divide into 12 little balls (I was only able to make 11 muffins, but I was too generous with my early dough balls and I was too lazy to remeasure to get the 12th but I am positive you can easily get 12 muffins out of 1 dough recipe. I promise.). Take your rolling pin (or empty wine bottle) and roll out each little ball into little round dough circles. After spraying the muffin tin with Pam, press each little round dough circle down into the muffin openings. You want there to be a bit of dough sticking above the top of each opening. After your press down all the little dough circles, brush them with olive oil and, using a fork, make little holes all around each dough circle to better aerate while baking. Place the muffin tin in the oven to pre-bake the dough, they should be in the oven for just a few mins, you want the dough to be slightly baked, but the edges over the top of the muffin tin should still be malleable.

In each muffin, place a dollop of marinara sauce in the bottom, stuff in a bunch of mozzarella cheese, and sprinkle with italian seasoning and crushed red pepper. Next carefully fold over the dough edges into the middle of the muffin tin. place another dollop of marinara sauce on top of the edges and a little bunch of mozzarella. Place back into the oven until the dough looks slightly browned and the cheese on top is bubbly. The muffins should be nice and firm at the bottom.

I left out a little bowl of warmed marinara for a dipping sauce as well. These muffins only had cheese and sauce in them, but I am sure you could add pepperoni, mushrooms, salami etc to the muffin, though you might have to sacrifice a little cheese and that, my friends, would be a travesty.

A slight disclaimer: I didn't actually eat one of these pizza muffins. I had had pizza the night before and was well, pizza'd out after making dough and smelling pizza smells for two days. But really I was told they were quite yummy. Maybe Rich will post a comment to corroborate that last statement :-) Hi Rich!

And voila, that is what I made for my Superbowl guests yesterday!