Crispy Thin-crust Personal Pizzas

Everybody has days they just want to curl up on their couch in front of old Friends re-runs and finish an entire personal pizza.

While you're at it, why not make this crisp, thin-crust. Full-on-flavor, generous-on-toppings personal pizzas?

They're light and heavenly, and leave room for that tub of Ben and Jerry's as a dessert.

Thin-crust Personal Pizza
Makes: 4 pizzas
Source: Starting Cooking

1/2 cup warm water
1 level tsp active dry yeast
1 level tsp sugar
1 1/2 cup plain white flour (not bread flour!)
1/2 tsp salt

Put 2 tbsp of the water in a small bowl and stir in the yeast and sugar. Leave it in a warm spot for about 15 minutes until mixture becomes frothy on top.

Sift flour and salt into a mixing bowl, make a well in the center and pour the yeast mixture. Add The rest of the warm water and mix until it forms a dough. Make the dough into a ball and knead it for 10 minutes. Cover in a bowl with a damp towel on top for an hour to let it rise.

Heat oven to 425F, after an hour remove dough and knead for five more minutes until smooth. cut into four equal balls and roll each into a thin circle. Place the circles on pizza trays or baking trays lined with cookie sheets.

4 rounded tbsp tomato paste
4 tbsp water
1/2 tsp italian seasoning
Vegetables, sliced. (I used Mushrooms, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers)
Pre-cooked toppings (I used Ham, Roasted Kabocha Squash)
Cheese (optional)

Mix tomato paste with water and seasoning, spread evenly on four pizza bases. Top with raw vegetables of choice and cook for 20 minutes, ten minutes on the top shelf and ten on the middle shelf.

Out of the oven, top with pre-cooked ingredients such as ham, as well as cheese and other garnishing.

Peanut Butter 'Cookie Dough' Balls

There are two things you must know about me. Well, amongst others.
1. I have a strong suspicion that the peanut butter i eat has started running through my veins
2. I like dried fruit even more than real fruit

So what other way than to start off my first post with these. If i were a cookie in my former life, I would have been these. No doubt.

I know that the trend recently is to use dates in everything, from cookies to granola bars. I have never ever set my eyes upon a real-like larabar, but i could imagine. I have seen recipe after recipe using blitzed up dates.

You see, I don't have dates here. Not unless you are willing to spend $20 on a 50g bag (I may love dried fruit, but not that much).

It is possible to use raisins instead, but I was afraid of failure, of dissapointment, and that my rusty old food processor will give it's final choke if i stuffed it with raisins and nuts to creamy-fy.

Until.
Until:

Third random-fact-about-Me: I spend possibly 4/5th of my awake-time on Pinterest. And now it has paid off.

The original recipe is from Chocolate Covered Katie, and I was sold. Peanut butter? Raisins? Roasted peanuts? No ingredient-I-would-have-to-ride-my-bicycle-under-the-hot-equatorial-sun-to-the-market-to-obtain?

Alright. I was willing to put my food processor's life on the line here.

Katie has an endless list of date-based bars and cookies. And this was the one I saw that used raisins in the initial recipe. My chance of failure was 50% less.

I didn't change much of her recipe. Not at all, in fact. I did not want to go horribly wrong and end up with raisin-peanut mush.

I did not. I ended up with this:

Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Balls:
Makes: 12 'cookies'
From: Chocolate Covered Katie

1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup plus 3 tbsp raisins
Dash of salt
2 tbsp roasted, unsalted peanuts
1/8 tsp pure vanilla extract

Place all ingredients into a food processor and combine until smooth. You can make little cookie like I did, or even granola-bar-esque shapes.

Katie says it is sugar-free and gluten-free.

It's also leftover free, that's for sure.

Now I have something to pack in teensy little lunch-boxes just to give me a reason to go to school.