Dearest Daughters,
When I asked Bel on Pizza Day what she wanted on her pizza, she replied, quite confidently I might add, "MACARONI AND CHEESE."
Genius! She's onto something, I thought. But then after a quick google, I discovered Macaroni and Cheese Pizza is a real-deal-evander-holyfield thing.
So, I looked at a few recipes and settled on this one. The photo attached to the recipe looks gross, but it sounded yummy. I mean, hello? Bacon. Nutmeg. Two kinds of cheeses. Be still my beating heart!
No, literally. This could quite possibly still a beating heart.
The pasta was delish on it's own, but extra cheesey. Cheesier than your run-of-the-mill mac and cheese, because you gotta think of it as a pizza topping, something spreadable, you know? Something that makes those stretchy cheese strings when you take your first bite, pulling away from that slice of goodness.
(As with all pizzas made in our household, I used the pizza dough recipe from my trusty Joy of Cooking which somebody put on the Internet here. But, you could use store-bought dough. The star is really the cheesy noodles in this case!)
It later dawned on me, after reading various twitter and faceook replies that maybe Bel meant to say "pepperoni and cheese". But, by that point I was all in. I was too personally invested in this carbo-licous-ness to back out.
Turns out, neither of you girls wanted to touch the Mac and Cheese pizza with a ten foot pole. Meanwhile, you ate almost the entire pepperoni, olive and cheese pizza you helped make "for Daddy."
Maybe it was the panko-crumb topping that threw them off? Though the topping really communicates "homemade, oven-baked mac and cheese," I'd probably leave it off next time. And let the exposed cheese do it's bubbling, browning cheese thing it does so well.
As it stands this pizza was more like really awesome, super cheesy bacon mac and cheese served on a decent homemade piece of flat bread, the combination of which was more novel than necessary.
If I made this again, I'd probably add tomato sauce under the noodles to make it more pizza-y. Beadle suggested adding more meat. But, his mind was busy concocting the next great pizza: meatloaf pizza. Not sure about that one, but chunks of ham could do this pizza justice, either mixed in with the pasta or sprinkled atop.
Thanks, Bel. You're a genius.
Love,
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