Pizza Roses

Because I am the coolest person ever, I threw a party to watch the Bachelor finale last month, and I made these pizza roses for dinner.  Get it?  As in, I could serve the pizza while  saying, "will you accept this rose?"  Hilarious, I know.  And the best news is that these were so delicious, and really not that hard!  You could make them for Valentine's Day, or a birthday, or just because you feel like having pizza roses. That could happen any day, really.

Because can we talk about how cute these are?  And they are just really delicious and very portable little pizzas.  Win win.

Being me, I made my own pizza dough, but you could easily use store-bought dough.  You can make your own sauce or use a jar - I was lazy and used a jar - and you can customize the toppings.  You could definitely add some fresh basil, or swap out the pepperoni for sliced tomatoes (I was out of tomatoes so I just made some without pepperoni for myself).  Add more cheese or less cheese or olives or pepper or mushrooms... I don't care!  Just make pizza roses!  Will you accept this rose?

Recipe:

pizza roses
adapted from Tasty
makes 6 - 8 roses

Ingredients:
1 pound pizza dough
approximately 65 pepperoni slices (you will need about 8 per rose)
1/2 cup pizza sauce
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray.

2) Roll out pizza dough into a large, very thin rectangle.  Cover lightly in tomato sauce.  Cut into 6 - 8 long, thin strips.

3)  Place pepperoni along the upper edge of each strip of dough, making sure that the slices of pepperoni overlap each other.  Sprinkle the bottom edge with cheese.  See photo below for a visual (teacher talk!)

4) Roll the dough strips into coils and place in muffin tin with pepperoni facing up.

5) Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until pepperoni edges are crispy and the dough is fully cooked through.  Remove from the oven and let cool for 2 minutes before removing from tin and asking people to "accept this rose!"