These skull pizzas can’t be topped
I don’t own any normal baking pans. I have a Bundt pan that I use for fancy things like cakes, a meatloaf pan with a removable bottom that I mostly use for greasy things like roasted chicken breast, cookie sheets that I use for meatloaf and the occasional batch of cookies, and my multi-use everyday muffin pans shaped like skulls. I have two of those.
For the past month I’ve been on a blueberry muffin kick. I’ll buy a box of muffin mix, make it while my son is either at school or still sleeping, and surprise him with skull shaped blueberry muffins. He thinks I’m weird. But blueberry muffins have a special place in my heart. When I was little we moved to Central America for my father’s work. There were a lot of amenities my brother and I were used to that suddenly we had to do without. We had access to all the fruit and vegetables you could imagine — many of them growing in our backyard — but things like candy bars and ice cream we could no longer get. Probably the biggest culture shock we experienced was not being able to walk to the Circle K down the street for popsicles when I was 4 years old and my brother was 11.
At school we could buy sodas from the snack shop, but there were a limited number of bottles and they were always reused. We drank warm Coca Cola poured into sandwich baggies that were tied with a knot, and to drink them you’d have to snip off the corner and squeeze.
For birthdays my dad would borrow an ice cream maker and we’d have ice cream that tasted suspiciously like powdered milk.
Meat was hard to come by. My parents would order cans of tuna, and as a treat we would have tuna sandwiches. Fishsticks were a delicacy, and decades later I’ll occasionally be hit with a sudden nostalgic craving for fishsticks and ketchup, even though I’m now allergic to seafood of any type.
The fruit was amazing. My brother would climb our mulberry tree and pull down branches low enough for me to pick the fruit, and we eat fresh mulberries straight from the tree. Or we’d pick tiny green peppers that grew on a vine along the back wall and tasted like a sweet pop of citrus.
Everyday my mom would pick mangos and avocados from our yard, and she’d bring home papaya which was deep orange and sweet. The papaya in California just isn’t the same.
My mom says that was the first time I had color in my cheeks. Every time she brings it up I gently remind her that I have rosacea.
But the memory that stands out the most was when my parents would bring home a box of muffin mix, and my brother and I would make them together. He would gather the ingredients and mix them together, and my job was to add the package of freeze dried blueberries so he could stir them all in.
As soon as they were done and cool enough to touch, we’d cut the muffins in half and eat them with thick slabs of butter. We must have gone through a stick of butter between the two of us.
Every time this month when I giddily present my son with a skull muffin he’ll roll his eyes, take the muffin and pour himself some milk — in a glass.
I ordered a new skullshaped muffin pan a few weeks ago, and decided that the only things better than skull muffins were skull pizzas.
I bought store made dough, divided it into six, and rolled them into balls. Then I stretched out each ball into a flat hand-sized pizza, added jarred pasta sauce and a little unwrapped mini cheeses, rolled it back up and put them seam down into my muffin pan.
If you don’t have a skull-shaped muffin pan you can use a regular muffin pan I guess. It just won’t be as fun.
Skull-shaped pizza muffins
Ingredients:
• 1 package of premade pizza dough
• 6 individually wrapped mini cheeses
• Tomato sauce
• Shredded cheese mix
• Vegetable oil
• Chopped parsley (optional)
DIRECTIONS Preheat oven to temperature indicated on the package of pizza dough. Brush muffin pan with oil. Divide pizza dough into six equal parts, then roll into balls. Working one by one, stretch out each ball into a roughly hand-sized disk. Spoon one or two tablespoons of sauce into middle of disk, then spread evenly using the back of the spoon. Place a mini cheese in the middle, add a generous pinch of shredded cheese, then pinch the dough closed. Cheese and sauce will bubble out if there is an opening.
Place dough ball seam side down. Brush top with oil and sprinkle with parsley. Bake for 20 minutes, or until dough is golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool before eating.