Baking with Olivia and Caroline

Hello summer, hello FRUIT PIZZA! Fruit pizza is the perfect summertime dessert. Seriously, this dessert is delicious. Hit up your local farmers markets or stands, the grocery store, or even your backyard garden (if the critters haven’t gotten to it first). Cherries, strawberries, raspberries, peaches, watermelon, blueberries all bountiful in our area and just begging to be adorned on a bed of a slightly underbaked sugar cookie crust and sweet cream cheese!

Fruit pizza, as strange as it sounds, was first introduced to us by my daughter Claire’s fourth grade teacher, Rosa. She had made it for her students to celebrate the end of the school year.  Claire came home from school with a piece of it wrapped in a napkin telling me that I had to try it, as it was quite possibly one of the best things she had ever eaten! I took one bite and knew that I had to make it myself. And sure enough, we did.

Over and over and over again.

We have made it using all sorts of different types of fruit: strawberries, cherries, mandarin oranges, pomegranate, kiwi, pineapple, mango, blueberries, raspberries, blackcaps, grapes (red and green), and the list goes on. We have decorated it for birthday parties by writing names or ages using the fruit, we have made it for 4th of July picnics by creating an American flag, in a sheet pan, and on a round pizza pan. We’ve made it in the dead of winter and at the height of summer! We have made this dessert for ourselves, for family and friends, and for just about every field hockey tail gate party. This dessert is probably the most loved and requested dessert we have made to date. And it just so happens to be extremely simple to make.

Fruit pizza doesn’t require much time in the oven, just a few minutes to bake the sugar cookie dough. And when it’s 90 degrees, who wants to crank up their oven for hours? Not us! Also, if you’re in a pinch and don’t have time to make sugar cookie dough, grab the refrigerated kind at the grocery store, we promise, we won’t judge! (It’s just as good). However, if you want to make it as we did, we will gladly provide the sugar cookie recipe we used (DM us). It’s one of my mother’s, and we dug it out of the “recipe book” just for you guys. (The recipe book in question is a cabinet with miscellaneous notes, papers, magazines, and books haphazardly shoved inside of it, which takes 15 minutes to sift through in order to find what you’re looking for.)  Organizational skills aren’t our strong suits, but making this dessert is!

Ingredients:

Sugar cookie dough (your own or store bought)

1 package 8oz cream cheese at room temperature

6 tbs Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla

You’ll need about a ½-1 cup of sliced fruits of your choice. It really depends on the fruit you choose and how you slice/decorate it

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread sugar cookie dough onto a sheet pan or a round pizza pan. We used a 14’ round pizza pan. Bake in the oven for 12 minutes. You want your crust to be a little underbaked. Allow sugar cookie crust to cool completely. Beat together the room temperature cream cheese, vanilla and sugar until well combined and fluffy. Spread cream cheese mixture over the cooled  sugar cookie crust. Decorate with  your fruit of choice.

Olivia and Caroline are enthusiastic foodies and bakers who are constantly in the kitchen, as well as explorers who create their own adventures in our area – and did we mention they are mother and daughter? Follow Olivia on Instagram to see her many creations at @oliviawvalentine.