Dessert pizza

Knightwing,
There are a lot of ways you could make a dessert pizza! If your looking for an easy one, Try this! Everyone loved it! We made it with a thin crust (use your existing pizza dough) spread any flavor of pie filling on the crust, bake until almost golden brown. Pull it out of the oven, top it with miniature marshmallows and cook it until they are golden brown, cut and serve. Very Easy! You could get a little more creative by adding other toppings as well. Maybe some crumbled granola mixed in with the marshmallows.
 
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We have one that is very popular…just a thin crust pizza shell that has been docked and baked plain. When it comes out of the oven we spread it with Nutella (a chocolate hazlenut spread that is available everywhere), put a few dollops of whipped cream and dust with powdered sugar.

Another pizzeria near us has a S’mores calzone…chocolate, marshmallow, graham cracker crumbs inside, brushed with oil and granulated sugar outside. This one is really good.

Jay
 
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Try these

Plain base. Spread patisserie filling custard, top with sliced apples, dusted with cinnamon and brown sugar, top with crushed walnuts. When it comes out of the oven sprinkle with icing sugar.

Plain base. Spread with Chocolate patisserie filling, top with sliced banana and finish with shredded coconut. When it comes out of the oven dust with icing sugar.

Both simple and very tasty.

Dave
 
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Here’s a real basic one. As easy as “pie”, pizza pie, that is.
  1. Use your regular thin crust dough skin, brush it with melted butter, sprinkle with a cinnamon and sugar mixture.
  2. Add thin sliced fruit, apples, strawberries, bananas, orange slices, peaches, mango, blueberries, sliced grapes, kiwi, etc. (be sure to put the apple and banana slices in water containing lemon juice to prevent them from turning brown).
  3. Bake as you do your regular thin crust pizza.
  4. Allow baked pizza to cool for a minute or two, then drizzle with a powdered sugar-water icing and serve.
    VARIATIONS:
  5. Make a mix of 16-ounces cream cheese, 4-ounces of Ricotta cheese, 4-ounces of sugar, and 1-large whole egg. Blend together until smooth, if necessary, thin with cream to a consistency that can be spread like pizza sauce on the dough skin. DO NOT GET TOO THIN.
  6. Make a crumb topping (streussel) by blending together 2-pounds of sugar, 8-ounces of honey, 1-ounce of salt, and 2-pounds of butter or margarine. Carefully work into a crumbly consistency.
  7. Prepare the dough skin with melted butter and sugar-cinnamon mix, then apply a thin layer of the cheese mixture, leaving about a 1/2 inch exposed edge to the dough skin. Apply the desired fruit, then apply a moderate application of the streussel topping and bake the same as your regulat thin crust pizza. Allow to cool for about 3-minutes, then apply a drizzle of the powdered sugar-water icing and serve. THIS IS GOOD! AND ITS DIFFERENT.
    If you wish, you can substitute prepared pie filling for the fresh fruit, but then youe dessert pizzas will be just like everyone elses, and it will be VERY sweet.
    The powdered sugar icing is very easy to make, just put a couple pounds of powdered sugar in a bowl, add a SMALL amount of warm water and begin stirring, add more water to bring the icing to the consistency of a very thick cream, then transfer to squeeze bottles, like the nes used for condiments. This will keep the icing from setting, store at room temperature (keeps for a week) to use, just invert bottle over pizza, and squeeze while moving bottle.
    The cheese mixture should be refrigerated. It will keep for a week in the cooler.
    Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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Tom Lehmann:
  1. Make a crumb topping (streussel) by blending together 2-pounds of sugar, 8-ounces of honey, 1-ounce of salt, and 2-pounds of butter or margarine. Carefully work into a crumbly consistency.
Click to expand...
Love this pie. Question: does your streussel have no flour in it? or is that a typo?
 
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Oops!!!
Forgot the most important ingredient, the flour. To the streussel formula add 3-pounds of flour.
Sorry about that.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Thanks for catching that.
 
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Great dessert ideas, Tom.

We are trying to prepare stuff as much ahead of time as possible as well as choose items that do well with delivery. How would that affect your recipes above? What parts can be put together ahead of time to reduce rush hour prep time and how well do the finished products handle over time (cause hopefully they are eating our pizza first!)
 
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dewar:
Great dessert ideas, Tom.

We are trying to prepare stuff as much ahead of time as possible as well as choose items that do well with delivery. How would that affect your recipes above? What parts can be put together ahead of time to reduce rush hour prep time and how well do the finished products handle over time (cause hopefully they are eating our pizza first!)
Click to expand...
The cheese mixture and streusel can be made ahead and held chilled for a while, like days. The fruit can be prepped/sliced ahead and hit with a little light lemon-water to hold non-brown for the day, or maybe to next day depending on the fruit. Apples could go a couple to three days. Bananas are more fragile.
 
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Charles;
All of the variations of my dessert pizza can be made ahead of time and either stored at room temperature (those without the cheese base) or refrigerated (those made with the cheese base), in both cases without the icing applied. Then, when needed, they can be reheated to warm, the icing applied and served. The variation withthe cheese base is just as good served cold as it is hot/warmed, in fact a lot of people tell me that they like it cold more than hot as a dessert item. That would really make it easy for you.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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I have an opinion that is different than most on this subject.

This topic has been discussed plenty of times in the past and usually the same responses are given, with maybe a recipe or two thrown in or a spin on the theme but it usually revolves around the same premise and that is the point I want to make.

I like to bake sweets quite a bit and to me I have NEVER had a dessert pizza or product made using pizza flour that is worthy of the cost of the dessert, nor the quality similar to the quality of the pizza served by the same place.

For example, I read on here about those Dunkin-strip things from Pizza Hut and I hadnt ordered from there in probably 7 years, (their sauce and crust just arent to my liking) so I ordered their new pasta dish and an order of those dunkin things.

Well I probably wont be ordering from Pizza Hut for another 7 years as both products were terrible. The dunkin sticks were a breadstick with not enough chocolate shavings on top, too greasy since they obviously make it using similar oil pans and a plastic tub of chocolate sauce.

Ive tried the apple pizza with topping, cherry pizza with the streusel etc, none are good. I have yet to order a dessert pizza which would motivate me to order from the pizza place JUST for the dessert, or even switch my mind from one place to another.

To me (unfortunately in my case I dont have the freedom to explore this either) I dont get why places put a product on the menu, try to sell it when in all liklihood the quality of the product is not as good as the quality of the pizza. Same goes for when places sell other items which are inferior…like a terrible salad or poppers etc.

Why isnt there a push to take the extra time, get the better suited dessert flour or just even make a dessert related crust and scrap using a pizza skin? The time it would take to whip up a batch of pie crust or a less dense and more sweet generic crust seems worth the time and small extra cost. The logistics of the temperature could easily be fixed by pre-baking the product before opening at lower temps, or picking up a reasonably priced small, portable convection oven which could be used for desserts, maybe lasagne, oven baked sandwiches, cookies etc and more than pay for itself.

This post isnt meant to pick on any one in particular or make a jab at all, rather wonder why so much time and money is spent in other areas and it seems the dessert area is really neglected. Maybe it is because the image given to the consumer is that for the most part, dessert isnt sold at a pizza place (outside a full service establishment or one that focuses on ice cream etc) and people dont expect to get a top quality product from the pizza shop.

Or maybe I am too picky and my standards dessert wise are not what the average customer has (which I really doubt).
 
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I agree with PizzainAZ.

If you want to sell a good dessert and all your staff is so busy from before opening to after closing that a dessert specific recipe cannot be prepared, then you need more staff or more hours from your present staff or at least a good dessert purchased from a vendor.

I can buy lots of stuff at Walmart that I would prefer as a dessert vs. a pizza crust concoction that is only distinguished from cooked pizza dough by the addition of some type of sweetener and some fruit. Check with your vendors and/or find a simple recipe that you or an employee can make during slack time.
 
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Here’s my take, anyone else, please feel free to jump right on in.
I think you’re being a bit too picky, these are pizzerias, pizza stores, pizza joints, what ever we wish to call them, for the most part, they are not 5-star restaurants, or even a bakery or coffee house or pastry shop. Desserts are not a top item on the menu, but rather an added feature that for the most part, our customers really do like, or they wouldn’t be ordering them. Most independant operatore would probably agree to some extent that Domino’s doesn’t have the best pizza on earth, so…would some one please explain to me just why they are so successful? They have to be doing something right, and their pizza is good enough for an awful lot of people out there. Same for the stuff from Pizza Hut, some one likes it, some one is buying it, they’re making money at selling it, and isn’t that what success is all about? Could it be made better? Absolutely! Go for it! I have no qualms at setting the bar a little higher with regard to quality of a dessert, but there comes a time when you must ask yourself what am I selling here, pizza or dessert? For most of us its pizza, and combined with the “limited” training that most operators have as either a qualified baker or chef, pizza is going to remain their main focus. I’ve been to stores that buy their desserts, and they are pretty decent, by my standards, for what that’s worth. For others, its a matter of cost, quality desserts aren’t exactly cheap to buy, and we can’t sell them any cheaper, so this may price them out of the reach of our customer base. As for just making “another dough” This is easier said than done. Some shops are so small, or limited in space that it’s a miracle that they can even operate, but they do, and that is a credit to their inginuity. Then come the issue if ingredient inventory, a lot of the shops don’t have the room to inventory additional flour. Sure, just put it on the stack of pizza flour, not a problem, wanna bet? Has anyone seen that bag of pastrey flour that we got in yesterday? No., and by the way boss, that pizza dough that we made last night is looking pretty funky in the cooler, what do you suppose is wrong with it??? By the way, where is that pastry flour? Ahhhh. That can be a real problem. I don’t want to write a book on the topic, so I’ll just say that it is great to have so many pizzerias to choose from, we can look aroiund to find the pizza that we like the best, and then make a quick trip over to the local pastry shop for a slice of their magnificent sour cream raisin pie, one of my personal favorites when it comes to dessert.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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We have tried the dessert pizza over the years. We found them expensive to make and we never sold enough to make it worth while.

Our dessert pizzas are awesome, despite sampling and advertising they never take off. People don’t want to spend the extra 6 bucks on something they have never had luck with. I think most customers have tried the dessert pizzas from all of the big dogs and have been less than thrilled, leaving the mindset they are not worth trying again.

We found a cheesecake which is stored frozen and served frozen and we use it as an added
value item. On Friday it is nothing for us to go through 32 plus slices of cheesecake.

By making it a added value item it people try it and then order is on a regular basis because it is so good. We get 2.75 a slice. We also have awesome coffee, just regular brewed coffee but it is awesome. Sure we are not a bakery, nor do we want to be but you know it is working when people are ordering the crud out of it. So for two people we get an extra 7.50 add on…and we are excited to serve these items. They are the last items they experience in our place so I am glad they are delicious.

To me that is true add on/ up sell at it’s best.

There is really not much labor involved in which allows for a little leway on the food cost.

Kris
 
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