Thursday, April 19, 2012

Pizza Muffins

There are multiple foods that I truly miss now that I'm on this health kick.

There are the aforementioned buffalo wings.


There is macaroni and cheese.

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And there is pizza.  Sweet, gooey, delicious, wonderful pizza.

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Give me pepperoni or give me death!  

Now, as you all hopefully know by now, I figured out a way to "healthify" buffalo wings that works for me so that I can still enjoy the taste of one of my favorite "bad" foods without drowning myself in the calories and fat.

It's pizza's turn.

My elation was tangible when I stumbled across a community recipe on Weight Watchers for pepperoni pizza muffins.  Fresh dough, yummy sauce, pepperoni, and cheese and all for 8 points+.

8 points?, you say. That doesn't seem like a very good value.

But what if I told you it meant that you got to chow down on SIX of these little puppies?  That's right.  Six little pizzas.  Enough to sate any pizza craving, and tasty enough to make over and over again.

It's almost unsettling how easy and good these are.  

Truly.

They're awesome.

This recipe is adapted from a community recipe on Weight Watchers that you can access here.

Pizza Muffins


Printable recipe.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup fat-free tomato sauce (the original recipe calls for Trader Joe's fat free pizza sauce, but you can use whichever tomato sauce you want, provided it's fat free)
24 tsp shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese (I purchased the Trader Joe's kind since I was already there)
1/3 bag of Trader Joe's Ready to Bake Garlic & Herb Pizza Dough
12 slices turkey pepperoni
Non-fat cooking spray (I like the Smart Balance Omega Non-Stick Cooking Spray)

Directions:
1.  Preheat the oven to 325.
2.  Spray a muffin tin with the cooking spray.
3.  Use a knife to cut the dough into 3 equal parts - set two parts aside (I put them in sandwich-sized ziplock bags and put them in the freezer.  Trader Joe's pizza dough freezes like a dream).
4.  Use the same knife to divide the dough into 12 equal parts.
5.  Put a piece of dough into each space in the muffin tin. Use your fingers to spread out the dough so that it covers the bottom of the pan.
6.  Use a 1/2 tsp spoon to scoop a heaping amount of sauce on top of each morsel of dough.
7.  Put a piece of pepperoni on top of each piece of dough.
8.  Sprinkle each piece of dough with approx 2 tsp of cheese.
9.  Bake for 10 minutes.
10.  Eat them while they're hot!  They easily slip out of the muffin tin thanks to the cooking spray.
This recipes makes 12 pizza muffins, but the serving size is half of that - so make them with a buddy!

When I make them with Michael, I use olive oil instead of tomato sauce for his half because he's not a fan of the red stuff.  If you do substitute olive oil for tomato sauce (1/2 tsp for example), be prepared for a couple more WW points+ - for a total of about 10.5 points a serving.

Ahhhh, what a great way to get your pizza fix.

There is hope for the healthy pizza lover after all.





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