Pizza Rolls... how to with pictures :)

Yum!

A local pizza place has these wonderful things call peperoni rolls. They even have a special night when they are only 50 cents each. Sounds like a great deal, huh? Well, it is... for eating out. But not for penny-pinchin-I-can-make-that-(almost)-from-scratch-for-less people like me! The cost per roll for mine are about 22 cents.

And honestly, I had the idea of making pizza pocket type contraptions to stash away in our freezer for quick lunches for Steven or for dinner-on-the-go-kind-of-nights. However, I've found that these are easier for me to make and a lot less messy to eat than pizza pockets (you don't really need a plate with these). I'm thinking we are for sure going to fill our freezer with these when we have our next baby.

I looked and looked online for a tutorial on how to wrap these suckers up... but the best one I found was this video (don't ask me how I found it). I did a couple of things differently than he did but in general (aside from the weirdness that is a vegan zombie) I think it's a pretty good tutorial.



Here is what you'll need...
Dough (I use artisan bread dough)
Extra flour for dusting
Some kind of sauce
A touch of water
Olive Oil
Cheese
Toppings (pepperoni, spinach, onion, chicken, etc)



Here's how to put them together...

Get you're dough out on a well floured surface.



And Roll it out like you are making a pizza.

I learned a little bit since I took these pictures and you don't want to roll the dough out too thin or the cheese will leak out. I've made them (several times) since this picture and have rolled the dough out a little thicker (roughly 3/8"... that's somewhere between 1/4" & 1/2") and it works much better. Sometimes cheese escapes, but most of the time it holds it all in.



Next Cut the pizza dough into slices

I was experimenting in these pictures. The optimum number of slices is 8! If you do 12 (like I did on the right) they come out too small. 8 is great. One pizza feeds our entire family for one meal... 4.5 pizza rolls for Steven, 2.5 for me, 1 for John. But make a second pizza so you will have left overs for the next day.



And then put on the toppings. Keep all the toppings in the wide section of the pizza slice. And keep all messy ingredients far away from little helpers... he kept bugging me for pepperoni slices.



Next, the tricky part. The roll!

So if you look at the bottom of the picture and work your way up you can see the stages.

The arrows are my attempts at making these pictures better. I've found that it's best to take the two flaps, in the very bottom slice, and bring them ALL the way over the toppings. Then press them down firmly (sealing it and preventing cheese escapes). Then start to roll. As I roll I like to seal the edges whenever I feel like there might be a spot where cheese will escape. It's not really as hard as I'm making it out to be... and if your cheese escapes you can just peel if off the cookie sheet and feed it to your cheese loving husband.



Then take some marinara and water it down a bit. Add some oil and whisk till it's all combined. Then paint over the pizza rolls on the baking sheet. I set mine on parchment because I put everything on parchment... I don't think I turn on the oven if I don't have parchment in the house.



The next batch I made was spinach. You can brush the top with olive oil and put a spinach leaf on it (or an our case a spinach leaf and a piece of cheese because I had to keep the plain spinach separate for John because he couldn't have dairy yet)... really just some way of identifying it so that you don't have to cut it open to figure out what is inside.



Like I said, they were a big hit and we have pretty much made them once a week since I took these pictures. You just can't beat feeding a small family of 3 for under $2!

Faith Cake

My lovely sister-in-law sent me a fun tutorial of a cake. I decided to make it for a friend's birthday. It didn't turn out quite as nice looking as the tutorial (of coarse)... the vertical part of my cross was really fat, so if you make this cake make the center hole smaller than you think it needs to be. It tasted great, though! And it turned out to be some of my best cake writing, ever!

You can read the tutorial over at i am baker.



I love this last picture because of Caleb shoving cake in his mouth. I hope he wasn't up all night!

Headband

We took family pictures a few days ago. It was a lot of fun... we had a great photographer. I also had a lot of fun figuring out what we all were going to wear. I liked my dress but it definitely needed something else.

I had some fabric (extra from a project that didn't turn out) that coordinated nicely so I decided to make a headband I had seen on one of the crafting blogs I follow. Problem was I couldn't find the tutorial when I went looking for it. I did save a picture of it so I decided to give it a try anyway. I took pictures along the way, but I'm not calling this a 'tutorial' exactly... you may have to fill in some of the blanks on your own, but I can at least get your wheels turning.

So I started with two strips of fabric about 2.5" wide. One about 16" long and another about 32" or so... but I didn't measure them... see what I mean, not a tutorial! I rounded the ends of the shorter one... I placed it on my head and said, "about there!" and then I cut... it's how I roll.



Then I basted the longer strip and pulled the bobbin thread to make a ruffle. I really like ruffles :)



Next I put WRONG sides together and sewed the two layers together (kinda like basting a quilt without batting). You can iron at this point... it gives it a different look, but I like to make fluffy thing (like, "IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE!"... I love that girl!).





Alright. Great... Doesn't look like much yet, but we are getting there.



Now, trim around the headband using the unruffled pieces as your guide.





Next you need some type of binding. You can use a coordinating fabric for this but I had some ribbon that went well so I decided to go with that. Attach it using your favorite binding attaching method... this is like The Quilter's Headband. You'll notice I switch to a walking foot... the fabric and binding can get kinda bulky... it's not necessary, but it helps.





You are suppose to pin at this point... but I hate pins and try to avoid them whenever possible. It might have made the underside look better but I was planning on not using the opposite side so I opted for the quick way. If you want to use the other side then go ahead and pin... or even hand stitch your binding!



OKAY... almost done. Admire your piece...







The last part is attaching the ribbons.

If you decided to make your own binding then will need to make two long pieces for tying. Take two strips of fabric as long as you want for tying (I like just a little longer than the main part, about 18") and twice as wide as the desired width... say 5 inches. Then with right sides together fold the fabric in half (the right sides are "kissing" now). And sew a seam like you are going to make tube. Also sew a seam (on an angle for pretty-ness) at the bottom of each stripe. Use a safety pin to turn your tube right side out and press.

Now... sewing on the ribbons...



You'll need to hem them, so take care of that...



And then fold over in thirds, like you would do a letter to stuff in an envelope.



And top stitch onto the headband. There might be a prettier way of doing this, but I knew I wasn't going to use the underside of my headband.



And Viola! Ahhh, so pretty.



Now I must confess that after playing with the headband a bit I decided it needed a little structure to help it stay in place. I tried bobby pins and various clips I had, but nothing held it in place well. Everyone's head is shaped differently and it may work for you without structure. However, ultimately I ran to Walgreen's and purchased one of those plastic headbands to hot glue to the underside. It worked great! and you can't even tell I did it... but now it's definitely not reversible. I, of course, picked ruffle side up!

Look how great we look!






More pictures to come, I promise.