YUM YUM!!!

About a month ago I felt like pizza, but didn't feel like wasting a ton of points on fast food pizza.  So I did some hunting around for a whole wheat pizza crust that had great reviews.  Which, I found here. 

I have made it a few times since then, including making several batches and freezing them.  They are all so delicious.  So much so, I had to share.

First, make the dough, follow the directions closely!  This is the second rising of the thawing dough I made a few weeks ago.  You freeze it before the second rising, and then it'll rise the second time while it thaws.  Be sure to cover it with a damp cloth while it does this or the outer part of the dough will create a kind of a crust when it dries out.

Punch down the dough and spread into a pan or pans as thus. Then, spread your sauce of choice over the dough.  Ours is Chunky Ragu Green Pepper and Mushroom.  It is so good.   I know it's spaghetti sauce, but this stuff is ridiculously delicious.  Try it, I promise you won't be disappointed.  And, there's a serving of vegetables in every half cup of sauce!

You can see the dried out dough on the outer edges, because I didn't cover them with damp cloths. Blech.

Then comes the cheese.  I love cheese, so I use 2 cups of Mozzarella on each pizza.  Or at least two bags of two cups each is used, I may or may not eat some while making dinner....

Now I chop the veggies.  Which we use as our centerpiece until we use them.  Colorful and changes every week!

No, there aren't potatoes on our pizza, that's for a different recipe for this week.

And spread the yumminess on.

Bake it and enjoy!

I figured out the points per slice to be 2 PP for the crust and 1 PP for the sauce and cheese.  Low point and delicious!  Try it, so good.  If you add pepperonis to what we already have on the pizza, make it 4 PP per slice.

We love it so much that we're having the left overs for dinner tonight!

Then for dessert we had these rather scrumptious Pina Colada Cupcakes that I made a few days ago.  You can find the recipe here at skinnytaste.com by Gina.  

They are super easy to make and delicious.

Happy Dining!

Handmade, from Scratch

With the holidays right around the corner, and by corner I mean in two days, I have been doing a lot of baking.  More than I usually get to - which is great - but it's out of necessity more than anything.

However, this necessity turned out to be the best thing!  I always knew that I loved baking but last night after rehearsal I was finishing up the rolls and started on the apple pies.  I found this great pie crust recipe on allrecipes.com which makes two entire pie crusts (which I have made before) - yay for quick and tasty! 

I needed five pie crusts and it's late, it's eleven at night already!  Thank God I had made extra apple pie filling in September/October and froze it!  I don't want to make each recipe individually to have enough, that would take forever and I want to go to bed.  But I also didn't want to overload my mixer and break it - that would suck, future baking would be difficult for some recipes.

So, I mixed the flour, sugar and some of the butter with the electric mixer.  Then I dumped it into a bigger bowl and worked it by hand until I needed the water added - which Adam helped with.  I kneaded it all by hand until I could make a ball and then separate it into the right number of crusts.

It felt so good!! Working the dough like that, mixing everything together, kneading it, rolling it out.  All the stress just seemed to roll out of me and it was wonderful!  Words can't describe how awesome it was.  I could so do that for a living.  But then the stress relief might not be the same.

Ah, sweet success and relaxation....... 

......Except finding space for everything in the fridge was a bit of a task!  We did some cleaning out of the fridge, consolidating extras and drank a lot of milk!

Happy Thanksgiving!