Thursday, February 23, 2012

Pinterest Challenge Day 23: Calzones

This pin has been really popular among our challenge group. It's a calzone that looks difficult to make but isn't. After hearing everyone rave about it, I decided to try it, too:
http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066246033/

I bought the refrigerated Pillsbury dough for it because I didn't leave time for making my own. Using the premade dough made this recipe really easy because I didn't even end up needing to roll it out. I just unwound it on a greased cookie sheet and was ready for the next step!

I still made my own sauce because, as I've said before, I don't like the store bought pizza sauce. I kept it fairly simple and diverged a bit from the sauce I usually make. I drained a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes. I mixed the drained tomatoes with half a cup of olive oil, six cloves of minced garlic, and a couple tablespoons of minced, fresh basil. I spread that out on a cookie sheet and baked it at 250 for an hour. Then, I tossed that mixture in the food processor with about a tablespoon of sugar and a couple pinches of salt:

Andrew ended up liking the sauce better with the sugar instead of honey, so I think I'm going to stick with that change from now on.

I spread the sauce in the center third of the dough and sprinkled a few veggies on top. Then, using kitchen scissors, I sliced through the rest of the dough into strips on each side of the sauce like this:


I added some shredded mozzarella cheese and a touch of Parmesan. Then, following the guide from the pin, I criss-crossed the strips over the sauce and cheese mixture. I ended up with this:

I baked it at 375 for 30 minutes, as directed, and pulled this out of the oven:

Isn't it a gorgeous calzone? Here's how it looked sliced:


Cheesy and oh-so-delicious! Between Andrew, Oliver, and me, we ate the whole thing. It's that good!

No comments: