Bubble-Up Pizza Casserole

This was one of those recipes I found while browsing Pintrest. It sounded interesting and because pizza is one of our favorite meals in our house, I thought I would give it a try. This was an instant hit. I knew my husband really liked it because he ate the leftovers, which is something he rarely does. Another hint that I had hit upon something amazing was just the next week, he asked when we were going to have it again.

Yes folks, I had on my hands a "Pin Win". This is a great recipe because it doesn't really take a whole lot to prep and it's a fun way for the little ones to eat one of their favorite food. You can also reduce the fat by using reduced-fat biscuits and turkey pepperoni, or even a fully veggie one. Go ahead, make your favorite pizza...in casserole form!

Bubble Up Pizza
(Printable Version)

Ingredients

• 2 cans of canned biscuits (16 biscuits in total)
• 1 (15 oz) jar spaghetti/pizza sauce
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• Your favorite pizza toppings (pepperoni, sausage, black olives, mushrooms, onions, peppers, etc.)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13" baking dish. 
• Cut up biscuits into fourths. Place in a large bowl. Add in the sauce, 1 cup cheese, and toppings. Stir until mixed well. Place mixture into baking dish. 

• Bake for 30 minutes, or until bubbly. Top with remaining cheese and bake for an additional 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted and starting to bubble. 

 My Take


As I said before, this is a huge hit around here. We have it  once a month, at least! There's not really much to it. One thing is that you can either use those baby pepperonis that they have, or, what I like to do, is cut the pepperoni in half. I find that doing this helps distribute the pepperoni more evenly and is more managable to eat.

If there are people that like different toppings, then you can just top the additional toppings before you put the cheese on, like you see with the black olives in the picture above. 

Easy Mushroom Pizza Pie

This past week I've started doing something I've heard about but never done. I've started to "celebrate" Meatless Mondays. Every Monday I'll be a vegetarian for one day. I'm hoping it will help me make better choices of what I eat, plus it makes me eat my fruits and veggies rather than starches and meat.

So yesterday I made a recipe which I have done before but haven't shared on here. It's called Easy Mushroom Pizza Pie. It's very easy to put together, although I may tweak a few things the next time I make it. Here we go!

Ingredients

• 1 (4 oz) can mushroom pieces and stems, drained
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 cup Original Bisquick mix
• 1/2 cup pizza sauce
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (4 to 6 oz)

Directions

• Heat oven to 425°F. Spray 10-inch glass pie plate with cooking spray. Sprinkle mushrooms, and 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese in pie plate.

•  In medium bowl, stir milk, eggs, and Biquick mix with fork or wire whisk until blended. Pour over vegetable mixture in pie plate.

• Bake 20 minutes. Spread pizza sauce over top. Top with remaining ingredients. Bake 15 to 20 minutes longer or until cheese is light brown. Let stand 5 minutes before cutting.

My Take

What I love most about how this turns out is the egginess of it. Reminds me of a souffle, but a lot quicker and easier. The original recipe called for onions both on the bottom and top, but since I don't like onions, I just took them out. If you would like to add them back in, then for the bottom, add 2/3 cup chopped and for the top put 1/3 cup cup. You can also add 1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper for the top as well.

I think next time I make this, I'm going to use fresh mushrooms and sauté them before putting them into the pie plate. I think that will give it more flavor than just using the canned mushrooms.

So, have you ever done a Meatless Monday, or anything like that? How did it work out for you. Was there any recipes you turned to?

Calzones

I found a couple of recipes for homemade calzones in my two Betty Crocker Cookbooks that I have. One of them is from the 80's, while the other one is a brand-new one. I kinda mixed the two together and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients

• 1 can of pre-made pizza dough
• Pizza toppings
• Pepperoni
• Sausage
• Mushrooms
• Black Olives
• Onions
• Etc.
• Mozzarella cheese, shredded
• Ricotta cheese
• Pizza seasoning
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Before they went into the oven

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350°F
• Divide the dough into 2. Make them as round as possible.
• Put the pizza toppings, mozzarella and ricotta cheese on one half of the circles, keeping a 1/4" edge on the outside.
• Sprinkle the pizza seasoning over toppings/cheese
• Fold the empty side over on top of the filled side. Pinch or use a fork to put them together. Make sure the seam is tightly sealed.
• Brush the egg on top of the now sealed calzone. Lightly sprinkle some more pizza seasoning on top of the calzone.
• Put into the oven and cook for about 20 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Don't be surprised if they grow a bit.
• Take out and serve with the sauce of your preference. We had marinara. :)

All done!

My Take

I was very amazed at how easy these were to make. Whenever I go to Old Chicago, I always order their calzones, but now I can make them in the comfort of my own home without high prices!

You can put the sauce inside the calzone, but I didn't want it too messy as well as (I believe) traditional calzones don't have the sauce in them. Also, make sure you're careful not to fill them up too much, otherwise the dough might split and yeah....that wouldn't be too good.

So, there ya (finally) have it. My calzone recipe. Feel free to leave comments about what works for you and any questions you have. I promise I won't take a week to reply! :)

Sorry. Again.

Life has suddenly become quite busy and stressful for me as of late, so when I get home, I'm not really in the mood to cook anything extravagant or anything like that. The thing I've cooked the most as of late has been pancakes using Bisquick mix. That stuff is amazing. I went through a box in a month. :p

Anyways, I finally sat down and planned out some menus (which is really usefully, by the way) and I have 3 days which I'll be cooking meals. Tonight, I'm going to be attempting to be making calzones with cheese sticks. I have a recipe for the calzones (never used it before), but the cheese stick recipe I'm totally making up as I go along. I'll keep you guys posted on how that all turns out.

Secondly, I'm going to be making turkey burgers with home made fries. Both of those are things which I do all by sight, but I'll post what seasonings I use so you can maybe try it at your house.

And finally, I'm making beef enchiladas. Again, this is a recipe I've had, but never used before. I was kind of hoping to use my mom's recipe, but I found that I didn't have that one, so I'll try a new one instead.

So, those are the recipes I'm going to be making this week. I'll try to post the recipes either the night of or the day after I make them. Now I have to run to the grocery store so I can get all my ingredients! Ciao~