Entertaining Creative Teenagers

On a recent Saturday Natalie's boyfriend joined us once again for a cookie baking and decorating extravaganza.  The holiday this time was Easter.  We are not religious and Nate is a Hare Krishna.   Go figure.  Perhaps needless to say, we were reverent in our focus, if not in the occasion.

It was a long day, starting with the dough at about noon.  We followed a new recipe provided by Hillary and my eyes nearly popped out when I saw the amount of flour and butter called for - until I realized it was going to make approximately 60 cookies.  About 3 hours later (1 hour to chill the dough and about 2 to roll, cut out and bake) we had 56 rabbits, chicks, eggs, butterflies and tulips cooling while I turned to the next task: frosting.

We stuck with my usual frosting recipe, but I wish we'd tried this, because we really didn't have enough butter in those cookies.  We went with a conservative (ha!) 7 COLORS: white, pink, purple, teal, yellow, blue and green.  And in a moment of divine inspiration, we added rose petal syrup to the pink frosting for a new twist.  A mere 4 hours later those 56 cookies were decorated and everyone was starving.  It was time to switch gears.

Ever since the kids were small we've had Make Your Own Pizza nights.  It started with Boboli crusts I admit, but has evolved to include homemade pizza dough using the bread maker that my former mother-in-law gave us back when they were the new thing and all the rage.  I have to say, for a time I made a lot of bread in that thing and it was really pretty good, if somewhat similar.  For the most part it now sits on the baking shelf in the hallway, but when it's pizza night it has pride of place next to the range.

At the outset of cookie cutting I'd also started the first batch of parmesan herb pizza dough, which makes three 10-inch, thin crusts; or about enough to feed Jack right now. So I made a second batch as well.  When the cookies were decorated I sent Natalie and Nate to the store to round out the desired meatless toppings and Jack and I got to work creating our meaty magic.  I don't own a pizza stone (yet), so I start my pizzas on metal pizza trays that have been drizzled with olive oil and scattered with cornmeal and after about 15 minutes at 425 I slide the tray out and finish them directly on the rack to give them a crispy crunch.

What do we have here?  The classic pepperoni and black olive, and the absolutely inspired pastrami and smoked fontina that Jack came up with.  Below that, another wacky winner: BBQ chicken with sliced onion, bell pepper and Chipotle Tabasco (thus explaining the presence of the Tabasco and BBQ sauce in the middle of all the decorating insanity above).  

Natalie and Nate decided on two variations of Taco Pizza, using the meatless taco filling I made for Natalie a couple of days earlier.  On the left, Nate's Happy Pie, with bell peppers, pineapple and jalapeno spiced black olives. On the right, Natalie's Tasty Taco Pie with pineapple and minced black olives (sans jalapeno spice, thank you).

Not pictured: pesto and pineapple pizza.  It was all pretty dang good.  Ok, I didn't try the taco pizzas, I took it on faith that they were good.