Pizza Cupcakes

Something awesome happened the other day, and – no surprise – it came in the form of cupcakes (!!!!!).

Like so much tomato sauce, the notion of pizza cupcakes had already been simmering in the back of my mind by the time my mom came home from the grocery store with a big bag of basil. She picked it up off the “chicken feed” table at our local grocery store under the mistaken pretense that it was full of spinach. Mom realized the error all too late, a phrase which here means “a few hours after she got home”, which was accompanied by the realization that it was so incredibly NOT within her power to use the entirety of the basil in a timely fashion. Figuring that the situation could be only be explained by divine providence and was therefore a signal that my pizza cupcake notions were both righteous and of an urgent nature, I stepped in and declared, “NEVER FEAR, MATERNAL UNIT! I will do my basil-consuming part!”

Alas, you see, they were already descending into a less-than-fresh condition.

Mind you, I fell a wee bit short of this undeniably divine basil-appointment. I noticed, while eating the finished product, that the cupcakes could have withstood more of the stuff. This was a conclusion drawn only from a place of duty… because they were otherwise FUCKING PERFECT.

I’m certain, gentle reader, that at this point you’re only DYING to hear how I executed these pizza-cupcakes-of-sheer-awesomeocity! BEHOLD the recitation of culinary protocol!

For the dough, I halved this recipe. After the dough had risen and was appropriately squished into cupcake-innard-receptacle-shapes in an oiled muffin tin, I applied what, at the time, seemed like liberal quantities of chopped basil.

To (most of) the cupcakes, I added diced fresh tomato and a few heaping tablespoons of some jarred mushroom marinara we had in the refrigerator. For similar reasons I used Monterey Jack for the cheese (based on what we had, it was that or cheddar). They went in the oven for seventeenish minutes at 375 degrees, and came out SO FREAKING PERFECT OH MY GOSH. It must have been divinely appointed because they were uh-MAZE-ing.

Into the oven.

Out of the oven.
The two on the right with no tomato sauce are plain save for basil and mint.
It was an interesting combination of flavors, but didn’t hold a candle to the others.

They’re easy. They’re scrumptious. The dough isn’t too thick, but it’s thick enough that it isn’t all soggy from the tomatoes and/or outright dripping pizza innards everywhere: a dough-to-innard ratio that’s especially important given the cupcakey purposes. At least in my case. Because I’m not the kind of girl who eats cupcakes with a utensil.

Oh, right, you might want to cool them for 5 minutes after they come out of the oven...
if you have the superhuman strength required to bear waiting that long (I might not have it).

I wouldn’t recommend these if you’re watching your carb intake or whatever because they’re so fucking amazing that you’ll want to eat, if not all them, most of them, I swurr. I would also not recommend them if for some reason you don’t like pizza.

Thus endeth of my fair and unbiased review of AMAZINGNESS that recently occurred first in my oven, then in my mouth.