Candy Critic Dessert Club – Our First Experiment - Apple Pie Pizza

Today represents our first ever experimental dessert. I have a few references for this creation (namely I've looked up a few apple pie filling recipes), but for the most part I'm winging this. The prep for this recipe is probably the most time consuming, and it should be done well ahead of time.

Ingredients

3 Apples (peeled and sliced into small pieces)
2 tables spoons lemon juice
2 cups of water
1 cup of brown sugar
1/8 cups of corn starch
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of grated cheddar cheese
Pizza dough (make your own or buy it, it's up to you)

For prep you have to make pie filling, and to make the apple pie filling you first have to prep your apples.  Peel your apples, take out the core, and quarter them.  Then slice your quarters into fairly thin slices.  As you cut your apples put them in a bowl with the lemon juice and mix them around.  This will keep your apples from going too brown. You can skip the lemon if you like, but it makes the apples more presentable.

When the apples are done, put your two cups of water on the stove and turn on the stove to start the boil.  Immediately (before the water boils), ad the brown sugar, corn starch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt.  Stir this mixture together constantly over the heat.  It should boil fairly quickly and then immediately it should start to thicken up.  When it's just starting to thicken up, take it off the heat and ad the apples.  Put the pot back on the heat and stir it around until it warms up again. Then turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 5 minutes (or until the apples are just getting a little soft).

If you want you can cook these apples until they're completely soft, but for the pizza it's nice to have a little apple crunch.  Once the apple are done, remove them from the heat and pour them into a bowl. Let the apples cool a bit, and either store them for later, or use once cool.  While you're waiting for the apples to cool, you can grate your cheddar cheese, how much cheese you use depends on your taste.  Some people don't really like the idea of cheddar cheese on an apple pie, so you might even want to skip this step entirely.  If you love cheddar cheese on your apple pie, go for the whole cup, if not just lightly sprinkle it on.

Once your toppings are ready, you just have to choose how you want to bake it.  I suggest baking the crust slightly before putting on the ingredients.  In this case it was decided to bake the pizza on the BBQ (a great way to bake pizza I might ad).  Roll out the dough if need be, then put it in the oven or on the barbecue until it's fairly cooked.  Once after it's cooked, put on the apple pie filling, and sprinkle on the cheese. Return the pizza to the oven/BBQ until it's warmed up and the cheese has melted.  Since all the ingredients are cooked already, there's no need to worry about cooking anything you just have to warm things up.  Once the cheese is melted, remove from the over, cut and serve warm.

This recipe worked out fairly well.  I did however have to drain some of the juice from the pie filling before adding it to the pizza.  What I suggest, is put the filling on the pizza dough with a slotted spoon, then if the pizza seems dry, just poor on the extra liquid from the topping as needed.  The cheese was a pleasant surprise, I didn't know if it would work, but it did.  The cheese added just a nice amount of savory to the sweet pie filling. I went with a little less cheese, mostly because I was sharing this pizza with friends and some weren't adventurous foodies. The filling made enough for at least two pizzas, since it stores well, I froze the second half.  Dessert pizzas aren't a hit with everybody, but the group that ate this one seemed pretty pleased.

CC