Fruit Pizza

Fruit pizza is an amazingly delicious dish and also a smarter way of serving fruits to your family. Summers are the best time to bake fruit pizzas. They are refreshing during warm afternoons. Fruit pizza, with colorful display of fruits, makes a lip smacking dessert for your kids and for your guests as well. They are also perfect for breakfast and a great way of starting your day with all the goodness of fruits.

Healthy Fruit pizza

Pizza with fruit topping is healthy, but crust made with sugar cookie dough makes it a high calorie desert, even the spread used to layer the crust is high on fat content. Glaze too has sugar and corn starch, pushing up the calories. Here are some alternatives to make your favorite pizza healthier

• Make your own crust instead of buying a packaged one. Use whole wheat flour instead of white flour to make a crust, or mix both wheat and white flours in equal proportions. This will make the crust more fibrous and also you can reduce the butter and sugar content while making dough for the crust.
  
  
• If you are using sugary cookie dough, you can still cut the calories by using thinner slice to make the crust. Pizza will taste equally good and crispier with thinner crust too.
  
  
• While preparing a cream filling, choose low fat cream in place of full-fat cream cheese to reduce the pizza's fat grams. Even better option is to prepare a mixture of hung curd whipped along with honey and vanilla extract and spread it on the crust.
  
  
• You can completely do away with the fruit glaze or replace the sugar and cornstarch mixture with fresh fruit juices.
  

Fruit pizza tips

• Bake the crust well in advance and store them. That way, fruit pizzas can be made in no time.
  
  
• Do not keep the pizza for a long time after topping with fruits. Juices of the fruits tend to make the pizza soggy, if kept for long time.
  
  
• Fresh fruits taste better on pizza, but if you are using canned fruits, do not forget to drain and blot them on the paper towel.
  

How to make fruit pizza?

There are three simple stages involved in laying out a fruit pizza.

• Crunchy crust
  
  
• The cream cheese filling
  
  
• Glazed fresh fruit
  

Crust is prepared with sugar cookie dough, which can be bought from any super market. Slice the dough and flatten it into a round pizza pan of 12'. Then bake the dough at 350° F for 10 to 12 minutes or until it turns golden brown. Remove it from oven and set it aside to cool. Now crust is ready to hold fruit pizza.

To prepare a cream cheese filling you require:

one package (8 ounce) of cream cheese

½ a cup of sugar

1or 2 tablespoons of milk

Any flavoring agent like vanilla, orange or almond extract

Take a mixing bowl and combine all the above ingredients to make it into a smooth and creamy paste.

To prepare a glaze for fruits, you need

4 ounces of water
½ a cup sugar
2 table spoons of corn starch
4 ounces of orange juice
11/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

Pour all the ingredients in a sauce pan and boil for 3 minutes or until it thickens. Allow it to cool down. It is ready to be drizzled over the fruits.

Finally, to make fruit pizza:

• Take the cookie crust and layer the cheese filling evenly.
  
  
• Arrange the fresh fruits like blueberries, bananas (sliced), peaches, kiwis, pineapple chunks, drained mandarin oranges over the cheese layer.
  
  
• Drizzle the prepared glaze over the fruits.
  
  
• Refrigerate the fruit pizza for at least an hour before serving.

This dish is so versatile that, you can make many variations to suit personal flavors. You can top it with any fruits you like depending on the availability and preference. Even the fruit glaze can be prepared by using different combinations. For example you can replace sugar and water with more of fresh juices or you can totally do away with fruit glaze. Fruit pizza without a glaze is milder and tastes good. Fruit jam also can be brushed on the fruit topping instead of glaze.

Mini fruit pizzas

Mini fruit pizzas are small and cute and are perfect for kid's party. You can even get the kids to lay the pizzas with their favorite fruit toppings. Here is the recipe of a mini fruit pizza.

1 package sugar cookie dough, chilled
8 oz cream cheese
1 cup fine or powder sugar
Fresh fruits cut into bite size pieces for topping
1/2 cup vanilla extract
Canned orange juice

• Cut the chilled sugar cookie dough into 1-inch circles.
  
  
• Place the circles on pizza pan, leaving enough space between the circles. Bake them until they are browned. Allow them to cool
  
  
• Mix together cream cheese, vanilla extract and sugar. Spread the mixture over cooled cookies.
  
  
• Arrange the fruits and brush the orange juice over them.
  
  
• Refrigerate the pizzas for an hour before serving.