Moms Who P.L.A.Y.: Cooking Playdate: Pizza Party

This latest play date was planned fairly quickly, but worked itself out amazingly.

So, who doesn’t love pizza? And isn’t it like an American staple? But, I’m sure it could be remixed in a few different ways so that we could have a few healthy options to serve our children.

We decided to make a few crust options and then work out the toppings as we went along. I also brought a few tomato sauce options for us to choose from.

Our first pizza was made by Kim from a recipe in her Baby Cakes recipe book. This was a gluten free option. Kim also opted to divide her dough in half to provide more variety. Just to keep with the theme, she even used dairy free cheese, daiya.

Now that I think about it, I think I forgot to try this option.

Our next tasting was zucchini pizza bites. For this we ended up spreading different types of cheese on top. We used goat cheese, mozzarella, daiya, and even fresh mozzarella. The recipe calls to broil the zucchini first, but we all agreed that we liked it without that step. I think I would play with this recipe more for an appetizer or hors d’oeuvres.

We then decided to take a crack at a cauliflower crust. This option was pretty tasty. While we used frozen cauliflower for our version, I think I would go with fresh. The recipe doesn’t specify, but my thought is that the vegetable doesn’t retain as much water as the frozen and would create a crisper end product. I may have to try this recipe a few times before I decide though.

One of our other options was a pre made whole wheat flat crust option. We ended up doing half cheese and half Hawaiian on here. I happen to love how this crust tastes, but thanks to forgetting to put the timer on, this one probably came out too soon. It also appeared to be very done even though the pineapples and ham may have needed a bit more time. Well, at least we know for next time.

And last but not least, we took a crack at one of my favorite pizzas, California Pizza Kitchen’s Jamaican Jerk Chicken. This was very delicious. This pie went so, so fast! And that was after we had eaten all of the other pizza, a mom had left, and another mom didn’t have any due to not eating meat. I think if I made this again I would actually read the recipe instead of just winging it. We used the Jamaican Jerk Sauce instead of making the Caribbean Sauce in the recipe. We also used a premade dough from Whole Foods that was very good.

Overall, I really enjoyed this play date and probably wouldn’t mind repeating it or these recipes. Also, during these play dates, I like to discuss a topic to get to know each other better. The topic for this event was, “The Most Fun You’ve Ever Had” and of course we got off topic because we ended up discussing weddings. But, I figured I would share a teaser from my first cruise. So, the next time you see me, ask me about the time I got kicked off of an island