Mar

Mini Fruit Pizza for Amanda’s Baby Shower

by Amber on March 21, 2011

Two of the best things about baby showers: teeny tiny adorable white fluffy baby socks and FOOD. I don’t know what it is about the socks. I just melt when I see them. Sure, onesies and bibs with tongue-in-cheek phrases are adorable, but they’ve got nothing on the socks. Just thinking about the teeny tiny feets that will go in those teeny tiny socks makes me squee like a 14 year old at a Justin Beiber concert.

Um, hello, LOOK at these! Thanks, Old Navy, for the photo. And the heart palpitations.

My lovely friend Amanda from i am baker and i am mommy is expecting a bouncing baby boy. He’s her fourth baby, her third boy, and I’ve been asking her what his name will be for months. For the longest time, she didn’t know. I think now she and the hubs have a vague idea, but she’s not sharing. *pout*

Anyhooter – the real reason for this post is that Amanda having a baby is cause for celebration, and she has many many blogging friends that love her more than cake (which is saying a lot, because dayum that girl can make some cakes! Have you seen this one, and this one and THIS one?), but we each live in different corners of the country. We would love the opportunity to get together and celebrate Amanda and the soon-to-be-here baby boy in person, but sadly it’s just not feasible. So we’re doing it online! And did I mention it’s a complete surprise for Amanda? She has no idea!

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a fruit pizza, but they’re all kinds of delicious. Cookie base, sweetened cream cheese for the ‘sauce’, and then plenty of wonderfully ripe fruit on top. I think they’re perfect food for a baby shower – light, creamy, fruity and sweet. But there’s always tons of wonderful food (and especially desserts) at a baby shower. Having an entire pizza slice-sized portion of this dessert would leave you precious little room for anything else. So instead of a round whole pizza, I decided I’d make bite-size versions that are perfect as an appetizer OR dessert.

Normally these pizzas are made with a sugar cookie base, but I find those too sweet for me. Instead, I used Mexican Wedding Cookie dough for the base. The pecans added an unexpectedly yummy twist, and the more savory cookie (since it’s not covered in powdered sugar) adds balance to the sweetened cream cheese and fruit.

P.S. I checked, Pecans are perfectly safe for a pregnant woman to eat (so long as she doesn’t have pre-existing nut allergies, that is.)

You can make the bases for these mini pizzas in a square pan like this one, or simply use a muffin pan for round pizzas instead of square.

Mini Fruit Pizza

makes 12 2×2 squares. A different pan might yield a different number

Mexican wedding cookie base
Sweetened cream cheese
6-8 sliced ripe strawberries
2 peeled, sliced, and halved kiwis
Clementine orange slices, blueberries, or sliced grapes
Powdered sugar for dusting

Allow cookies to cool completely before beginning assembly. Spread each cookie with a dollop of sweetened cream cheese so the cookie is fully covered. Place a slice of strawberry, a slice of kiwi, and Clementine orange slice (or blueberries or grapes) on each cookie. Dust with powdered sugar.

While each component of the mini pizza (cookie, cream cheese, sliced fruit) can be prepared a few hours or a day ahead, it is best to assemble the pizzas just before the party begins. If assembled too far in advance, the pizza will become soggy from the cream cheese and juices from the sliced fruit.

Mexican Wedding Cookie Base

adapted from Robb Walsh’s The Tex-Mex Cookbook

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350F. Make sure the pan you use is non-stick. If it is not, spray with cooking spray for baking, or grease with butter and sprinkle each well with flour.

Beat the butter and powdered sugar together on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and pecans and mix again until fully incorporated.

By hand, add the flour and mix until combined, but be careful of over-mixing.

Using a medium cookie scoop, drop one scoop into each well of the pan. With clean and dry fingers, press the dough into the pan so that it completely covers the bottom of each cup and is somewhat even and flat.

Bake for approximately 12 minutes or until the edges of each cookie base are golden brown and pulling away from the edges of the pan.

Sweetened Cream Cheese

1 8 oz block of cream cheese
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Place cream cheese in a medium sized mixing bowl with powdered sugar and vanilla. Mix on medium speed with a hand or stand mixer until well combined, and light and fluffy.