Saturday, February 25, 2012

Cauliflower pizza crust - As seen on Pinterest

For lunch today, we didn't really have any plans, so from my perch on the bed folding laundry, I yelled to my handsome hubby to look up the cauliflower pizza crust recipe.  Thinking he would balk at the idea, I was pretty surprised when he went for it without complaint.  The recipe he came up with was this one, and it basically follows the rest I've seen.  

Now, before you get too excited that I'm following a recipe, let me just laugh in your general direction.  *bah hahahahahaaaaa*  First of all, we didn't have enough mozzarella to put in 2 crusts and top the pizzas, so that required a modification.  Secondly, I knew with my older son that if the crust tasted overly cheesy he wouldn't eat it.  For the crust for hubby and me, we did 1/2 cup of mozzarella and 1/2 cup of pepper jack.  We like things spicy.  For the crust for the boys, we did 1/2 cup of mozzarella and 1/2 cup of parmesan.  I have to tell you, both were successful, but I wish I'd done the parmesan for both.  Our crust needed to cook just a little longer, I think, from the oils in the jack compared to the parmesan.  
In a nutshell, here's how it goes:

Cauliflower Pizza Crust
Yield: 1 pizza crust (we obviously doubled it for our lunchtime trial)

2 cups grated cauliflower (not the stalks, just the "flower" part)
1 large egg
1 cup of cheese (obviously you can use whatever you like, but my recommendation would be 1/2 and 1/2 mozzarella and parmesan)
1/2 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp dried oregano
Cooking spray, for the pan

Preheat oven to 450º.

With a cheese grater, using the standard large holes, grate the flowery parts of the cauliflower into a microwave safe bowl.  You will start with 2 cups, but it will shrink to about 1 1/2 cups after cooking.  Place in the microwave for about 8 minutes.  You do not need to add liquid or anything to it.

Remove the cauliflower and combine with the other ingredients.  We added the egg and cheese directly into the bowl and the heat from the cauliflower did not cook or otherwise funkify the egg, thankfully (and yes, funkify is a technical culinary term).  

Pat into a 9-12" circle on a sprayed cookie sheet or pizza pan.




Bake at 450º for 15 minutes, or until crust is crispy.  The edges did tend to get a little brown, but that did not make them taste funny.  I didn't get a picture of the crusts before I started topping them.  Sorry!  

Set the oven from bake to broil.

Top however you like and broil the pizza for 4 minutes, until cheese is melted.  

The boys' pizza had pizza sauce, turkey bacon, and cheese.  

Our pizza had pizza sauce, spinach, kalamata olives, mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, and cheese.
Completed vegetable pizza!

Gooey cheese!
2 thumbs up x2!  Pardon my shirtless boys...

Using the WW Recipe Builder, it says half the veggie pizza is 10P+.  In the future, I will be using reduced fat cheese, but I didn't have that in the house today, and I'm sure that would reduce the points considerably.  Honestly, compared with the homemade pizzas we made a few days ago with the Trader Joe's pizza dough, I preferred this cauliflower version.  As an additional spin, my sister said she has made just the crust as a sort of faux garlic breadstick, and they really enjoyed it.


3 comments:

Chrissy said...

I've been considering trying this. Anything that adds extra cheese to pizza is a fabulous idea in my book!

Amber said...

Can't go wrong with that, right?!

Kim said...

mmmm looks so good and its a plus to see your kids like it. my daughter is picky as ever but seeing that makes me think it could possibly work. Thanks for posting