Pizza Bites

When my children were small and Martin would travel on business, I pretty much knew what dinner menus would consist of, in his absence. Those daddyless days meant lots of very easy to make stuff like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fish sticks, macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese. The kids were completely amenable to these simple foods - too bad they didn't get quite as excited about mommy trying to convince them that 6 pm really was a fine time to go to bed!

Martin is gone for the next ten days and I have Brian in the house to feed. Other than the fish sticks, he'd probably be just as happy to go along with the "daddy's gone, I'm not cooking" menus from long ago, but I've felt that my 20 year old deserves a bit more than those typical kiddy foods. Even so, let's not get carried away! I'm still not going to slave all day over a hot stove so what we eat is likely to be extremely simple to prepare or take home from a nearby restaurant.

When I saw this pizza bite recipe on.....where else...Pinterest, it seemed like a hit to me. It certainly looked easy to make and I had a feeling the taste of a tiny round pizza would be appealing to Brian. I was both right and wrong. Brian loved the bites, eating much of the first pan of testers before I could even get them out of the pan. They were, however, a little more labor intensive than I'd imagined. So much so that I considered not making the second and third batches but ultimately decided I'd better use up the biscuits, as long as I'd taken the trouble to buy them.

The bites are basically Becky's Cheese Secret Rolls dumbed down and glorified all at once! Using the canned biscuits might seem easier than preparing a dough but, in reality, flattening out each roll does take a bit of time. I tried just stretching them with my fingers but the result was messy and not flat and uniform enough, so back to the rolling pin I went.

I put "glorified" because Becky's are cheese only, while these have the extra zing of pepperoni slices inside. Next time I make a batch, I'm going to get the mini pepperonis I've seen in stores because bringing the biscuit dough up over the full size rounds was somewhat difficult. Not in a digging a trench, sweating it out kind of way, but it was certainly a bit time consuming to make all the ends fold up over the pepperoni and be able to crimp fully closed. For all I know the original recipe off Pinterest may have been using the mini-size anyway - it's often hard to get size proportions in photos, with no distinct reference point to compare. That's one thing that bugs me about recipes on Pinterest - many don't seem detailed enough for me and my need to do it just the way someone else had success with.

When I was making my first batch of the bites, it was way too late to head to the store. Not good since it turned out I didn't have any italian seasoning. What, me worry - I think not. I simply googled italian seasoning and came up with a recipe to make my own. (How did I ever cook before Al Gore invented the internet????) When Brian was eating his first few bites one of the things he wanted to know about was how I made the "stuff on top". According to my trusty taster, that seasoning was what really made the bite taste just like a little bite of pizza.

PIZZA BALLS

3 cans Pillsbury Buttermilk Biscuits (10 biscuits per can)

56 pepperoni slices

Block of cheese (Colby & Monterey Jack or Cheese Stick)

1 beaten egg

Parmesan

Italian seasoning

Garlic powder

1 jar pizza sauce

Cut the block of cheese into squares, 1 for each ball

Flatten a biscuit out and stack pepperoni and cheese on top. (pepperoni, cheese, and then another pepperoni on top of the cheese)

Gather up the edges of the biscuit.

Line the rolls up in a greased 9x13 in. pan. Seam side down

Brush with beaten egg.

Sprinkle with parmesan, Italian seasoning and garlic powder.

Bake at 425°F for 18-20 minutes.

Serve the rolls with warm pizza sauce for dipping.