Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Almond Streusel Cream Cheese Dessert Pizza

Some friends invited us over for dessert and games one night last week and I decided I really wanted a cream cheese danish. But I'm not brave enough to just dive in to making laminated dough at this stage of my baking career so this is what I came up with instead. I've made it a few times now for various groups of people and everyone loves it. It is gooooood.

Dough:

Same pizza dough and process I blogged about here. But I've recently discovered that my bread maker has a dough cycle which makes my life a really happy place to be. Throw in all wet ingredients plus salt, add flour, make a well and pour in yeast. Turn on dough cycle and ignore for an hour and a half. I'm note sure if it's the additional kneading or what but it makes a slightly softer crust that we really like. Either way, it's still the easiest pizza dough I've found.



Cream Cheese topping (makes enough for 2):

2 8 oz packages cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c sugar
1 egg yolk

Combine all, beat until fluffy.



Streusel (also makes enough for 2):

3/4 c flour
1/4 c packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
6 T butter, room temperature

Mix dry ingredients. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until it fine crumbs form. Use hands to squeeze into larger clumps.




Assembly:

Roll out pizza dough to desired thickness. Spread with half of cream cheese mixture (I've been storing the other half in the fridge for 24-48 hours between baking sessions and it still turns out fine). Sprinkle with streusel mixture and sliced almonds. Bake at 350 for 22-26 minutes. Slice into wedges or breadstick type strips. If you want, when it has cooled a bit you can drizzle it with a powdered sugar glaze (a little bit of milk beat with a lot of powdered sugar). It's best served warm.

Even though it would probably be fine left out on the counter, I've been storing it in a tupperware in the fridge since I'm not really sure. 20 seconds in the microwave makes for a lovely warm morning snack :)

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