Football Pizzas for Game Day
Score big with these tasty individual football pizzas!
I was going to make these personal football pizza’s the healthiest pizza snacks ever. You know, thin whole wheat crust, homemade pizza sauce, spinach and hot pepper topping, light on the cheese – all those little things that make a difference. But then I saw the bacon in my fridge and I strayed from the original plan.
At first, it wasn’t too bad, after all, a homemade spinach pizza with a couple of pieces of bacon is still way better than any other pizza loaded with cheese and pepperoni.
But things didn’t stop with a couple of pieces of bacon. When the kids came into the kitchen and saw me making football cut outs, they wanted to make their own personal football pizzas too. That’s when the pepperoni sticks and mozzarella came out of the fridge. And we ended up with these.
So we took a little tumble from the healthy snack wagon, but ended up with an amazing assortment of tasty pizza footballs that pleased the whole crowd – spinach, pepperoni, bacon and cheese lovers alike!
What follows is how I cut the football shapes and my initial recipe for spinach, bacon and goat cheese pizzas.
How to Make Pizza Dough into Football Shapes
I do not have large football cookie cutters – I don’t even know where you would get ones large enough for this project. Instead I made my own – cause that’s how crafty I am! I tried using a plastic yogurt container and a coffee tin. After cutting the lip off both, I just squeezed them to make somewhat of a football shape. Both worked equally well at cutting the dough. Now you know my secret trick for getting football shaped mini-pizzas.
Football Shaped Pizzas with Spinach, Bacon and Goat Cheese
Ingredients
- 1/2 Tbsp canola oil
- 3 cups spinach leaves
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 batch whole wheat pizza dough
- 1/2 cup pizza sauce
- 1/2 sweet pepper yellow, red or orange, diced
- 1 - 2 Tbsp hot banana peppers diced (as desired)
- 3 slices bacon crumbled (optional)
- 1/3 cup goat cheese
- 1 slice mozzarella or white cheddar cheese
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium heat.
- Add garlic and saute for 1 minute.
- Add spinach and toss until wilted, about 2 minutes.
- Remove from heat, drain any liquid and allow to cool.
- Roll out pizza dough until fairly thin.
- Using football cookie cutter (a plastic container cut and shaped into a football will do nicely) cut as many footballs as you can. Bring together scraps, re-roll and repeat until all the dough has been turned into footballs.
- Transfer football shapes onto lightly greased cookie sheets.
- Add pizza sauce.
- Distribute wilted spinach, hot banana peppers, sweet peppers and bacon (if using) evenly between footballs.
- Top each with goat cheese.
- Bake until crust is crisp, about 8 minutes.
- Meanwhile, slice mozzarella into thin slices and small bits for use as the football strings.
- When the pizzas come out of the oven, add the mozzarella decorations on top of each pizza. The heat from the pizza will melt the cheese just enough.
- Let cool slightly and serve.
Notes
Need more snack ideas for the big game? Check out these tasty treats: