Pizza Cupcakes Redux – Spinach & Kale Pesto

All Photos © Christine Elise McCarthy 2012
Follow @celisemccarthy

So – after the success of my first pizza cupcake effort – I thought I broaden the experiment with other pizza toppings I had around.  I had leftover kale pesto, about 5 ponds of fresh spinach & several kinds of cheese.  I’m finding that the cheese doesn’t melt as much as I’d like before the crust gets too brown – so – you might want to play around with oven temperature.  I originally suggested 425 – but this might work a tad better around 350-375.  That way the cheese gets to sit n the heat for longer than ten minutes or so.  None of this is a science because all of us will roll our dough to varied thicknesses and use different ratios of cheese to other fillings etc.  And – our ovens are no calibrated exactly the same.  I found these spinach pizza cupcakes to be on the wet side – even though I used raw spinach.  I suspect a longer baking time at a lower setting will fix that.

For the spinach filling – I just tossed 2 cups or so of spinach with some olive oil, crumbled feta cheese & grated Parmesan cheese.  You could use all Parmesan or goat or whatever blend you prefer.  I left this in the fridge for a while & it wilted the spinach to the point that it could be manipulated better than the springy fresh, raw spinach leaves.

The kale pesto cupcakes were layered with mushrooms & my five-minute arrabiata sauce and cheese.  Again – these layers were randomly selected.  Experiment with your own favorite toppings.  If you are using any meats, though, be sure they are cooked before adding them as these cupcakes are not in the oven long enough to cook meat.

Just for fun – I will show you the layered progress of these two kinds of cupcakes: