Monday, June 23, 2008

Fruit Pizza-Gluten Free

I've always been intrigued by fruit pizza. I've never actually had it, but it's always sounded interesting. My favorite sugar cookie recipe, from www.eatingglutenfree.com, is also said to be a good fruit pizza crust. And then, there's one of my favorite old copies of Cooking Light magazine that features lemon curd. A lot of my memories are associated with smells and tastes. As a child I remember the bliss that was lemon curd from Picolo Mundo, a bakery in Chicago. It was a definite treat for the family, certainly not a day to day thing, but I've loved lemon curd ever since. So, when I got a spread in the magazine devoted to lemon curd, I was quite interested in the food. But, sadly, never got around to making my own lemon curd, and trying all the recipes. Until this week. As I was making Lemon Meringue Pie for Father's day, there were no individual lemons for me to purchase at the store, so I had to buy an entire bag of about a dozen lemons. So, I've found myself with a few lemons on hand to use up, and the perfect excuse to make the Cooking Light lemon curd calling for three fresh lemons. And, after going out to the fruit farm and picking my own fresh sweet strawberries, the perfect excuse for making the fruit pizza featured in the magazine. So, I'll try to add the various elements of the recipe here.
First, I made the lemon curd the night before so that it could thicken in the fridge overnight. The recipe is as follows:
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp grated lemon zest
2 eggs
2/3 cup fresh lemon juice (about 3 large lemons, I had to add a touch bottled juice to make up the difference)
2 Tbsp butter
Combine first three ingredients in small saucepan over medium heat, and whisk, about two minutes, until sugar dissolves. Then add juice and butter, and stir constantly with whisk about five minutes, or until mixture coats the back of a spoon. Let the mixture cool in the pan, then transfer to a container, cover and chill.The pizza is best served right after being prepared, so this does involve some planning. First make the sugar cookie dough, I cut their batch in half, and still didn't use all of the dough for the crust, I'll give you my halved batch ingredients:
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp margarine
6 Tbsp vanilla pudding powder
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
scant 1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups Featherlight flour mix

Cream first three ingredients. Add egg, mix well. Add vanilla. Add xanthan gum, baking powder and salt; mix well. Finally add flour mix and beat well. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour, until it is still and able to be rolled out. Then, roll the dough out into a 12" circle, about 1/8-1/4" thick and place in 12" pizza pan. I removed dough, and flattened it out until desired thickness, within the pizza pan.
Bake at 350 for about 8-10 minutes, or until browned, and cooked through.
For the pizza you will need the following ingredients:
2 Tbsp seedless raspberry jam, melted (I used regular jam and just sent it through a sieve to remove seeds)
3/4 cup lemon curd, or enough to spread across the pizza
Container of each of the following berries: raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries
2 ripe plums, sliced
2 Tbsp sugar

Melt the jam and spread it across the top of the sugar cookie. Then, slowly drop the lemon curd on top of this, and spread a layer over the jam. Arrange the plums in a circle around the edge of the pizza, then using the berries in whatever order you choose, fill in the concentric circles until you reach the center, and mound the remaining type of fruit so that the surface is covered. Sprinkle the fruit with the sugar, then place under the broiler for 2-3 minutes, taking care not to burn the outside edges of sugar cookie crust.

3 comments:

Melissa said...

Oh you make me the happiest person in the world!!! Can't wait to try it! Thanks for making Celiac so fun-

Melissa said...

I love fruit pizza and have never tried the jam on it, but I usually do a cream cheese frosting and then the fruit on top of that. I will have to try the jam!

Jeanine - The Baking Beauties said...

Thank you so much for this recipe. My MIL always made us fruit pizza as a special dessert, but now that I have to eat GF, I'm trying to find a new recipe to use. This looks great. I've never seen it with the jam & lemon curd before either, and I bet it would be fantastic! Thanks! :)