Spooky Margherita Pizza

It's Halloween!! So, here is my Spooky Margherita Pizza. Hosting pizza nights is one of my favorite things to do because it encourages you and your friends to cook at home and it allows you to add your favorite toppings to your pizza!

I chose to grab fresh pizza dough from the market, but it's up to you to just grab prepared pizza crust. If you're gluten free, my favorite pre-made crust is Eat Banza's chickpea pizza crust. Let's get to the recipe!

Yields: 1-2

Portion: ½ pizza

Prep time: 20 minutes

Total time: 40 minutes

This recipe is vegetarian. Feel free to use dairy free mozzarella to make this a DF recipe.

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Ingredients:

1 16oz ball of pizza dough

Pizza sauce

16oz mozzarella

Fresh basil leaves

Kalamata olives, sliced in halves

Cherry tomatoes, sliced in halves

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Optional: chili pepper flakes

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Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400.

2. Properly roll out dough- Find a flat surface in your kitchen. Lightly flour the surface. Place the dough in the middle and press it down into a flatter circle. Take the rolling pin and press down and let the pin rotate as you go. Turn it occasionally to ensure even dough. Keep rolling until the dough is completely flat and even.

3. Bake dough - Place the dough onto a pizza pan. Coat dough with olive oil and sprinkle on less than ¼ TSP of salt. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Don't allow the dough to toast because you will be taking it out to add the toppings.

4. Preparing the toppings - Slice the mozzarella log into 1 inch thick slices. Use a knife to gently carve out ghosts. Use the end of a straw to create the eyes and mouth. If you have a small enough ghost cookie cutter, use that. Set aside. Have basil, cherry tomatoes, and olives ready.

5. Create the pizza - Gently take the pizza out of the oven. Add pizza sauce to pizza, leave 3 inches of space for crust. ¼ cup of pizza sauce should be plenty, add more if necessary. You don't want it to be too soggy. Layer on the mozzarella ghosts, olives, cherry tomatoes, and basil. Drizzle on olive oil to garnish. Season with salt, black pepper, and chili pepper flakes to taste.

6. Bake again - allow crust to turn light brown and for the mozzarella ghosts to melt.

7. Slice into 8 pieces - Enjoy!

I hope you love this recipe as much as I did, so if you do, please leave me a comment and/or give this recipe a rating! I always read through my suggestions and comments, so please let me know your thoughts. If you have any questions you can feel free to DM me here or through Instagram. Speaking of Instagram - please tag me in all of your creations! I love seeing how the recipes come out and seeing how talented you all are. Sending my love.

xoxo,

Jasmin D the RD