A few months back I was in Colorado and I had dinner with some girlfriends one night. It was a potluck style dinner – those are my favorite – and one of the girls was serving up Fruit Pizza for her dessert. I was pretty sure I had Fruit Pizza before, but I recalled that I wasn’t a big fan of it – mostly because I’m not a crust girl. I just don’t typically like crusts – which is quite weird since I am DEFINITELY a bread girl. Alas, I digress.
Being the good dinner guest I am, however, I served a slice of the Fruit Pizza to myself and took a bite. It literally melted in my mouth! I immediately knew there was something different about this Fruit Pizza than the ones I had eaten before. What was it?
The crust! It wasn’t a typical crust! I gently inquired…and found out it was a sugar cookie dough, rolled into a large rectangle to create a crust. Genius! Inspired by the delicious concoction, I ventured out to recreate it for myself.
Last night I decided to make Homemade Individual Fruit Pizzas, so in lieu of making one large crust, I made a batch of sugar cookies and decided they would be the perfect size for individual servings.
I cooked the cookies all at once and then allowed them to cool for a couple of hours. Normally I do NOT have the necessary restraint to allow for proper cooling time, but this time I made them right before I ran an errand, so I had no choice but to leave them at home to cool while I was gone. The added bonus to this was that when I returned home the whole house welcomed me with sugary smells.
Having the “crusts” done, I then made the icing. To make the icing I recommend you use 1 8ounce package of cream cheese (softened) and 1 cup confectioners (powdered) sugar.
Mix well until both ingredients are well combined and your icing is nice and smooth. Then I prepared the fruit. You can use any kind of fruit, but I personally think the following fruits are very complimentary to this recipe and are easy to work with:
- Mandarin Oranges
- Strawberries
- Raspberries
- Kiwi
- Pineapple Chunks
Line up the cookies on a platter and prepare to assemble the Individual Fruit Pizzas.
Spread as much, or as little, of the icing as you prefer onto the surface of the cookies. Then, top with fruit, being careful to have nice presentation as you go. Once completed, set the platter out and allow everyone to grab their own. make sure you grab one too, because they’ll get snatched up quickly!
If you don’t have many guests (or children) to serve the pizzas to, then I suggest you only assemble as many as needed. The icing and fruit will usually keep in the fridge up to a week and even if you run out of these, the sugar cookies are tasty enough on their own as an after dinner treat, or a midnight snack!
