It started out simply enough. I was looking up Iron Man cupcakes on Pinterest (for completely non-blog related reasons. Sometimes you just wanna look at superhero cupcakes, y'know?) and I stumbled across an Iron Man pizza. I thought that was a really cute idea. And then I thought, I wonder why I've never seen a Black Widow pizza. That would be super easy. And then my brain thought about doing a Captain America fruit pizza, and it just kind of snowballed from there.
Plus, with Avengers: Age of Ultron coming out in LESS THAN A WEEK OMG I AM SO EXCITE, it seemed like the perfect time to let Mr. Brain go wild and create the PizzAvengers: Earth's Mightiest Pizzas. (Those of you that live places with an earlier Avengers release, no spoilers, please!)
I stuck with the core 6 Avengers from the first movie because it just worked out better that way. 6 pizzas is already more than enough for just me, and I wouldn't have the slightest idea of what to put on a Scarlet Witch or Quicksilver pizza.
All of the pizzas (except Cap. He's special) start off the same way. I used pre-baked crusts to save some time (you can usually find them in the refrigerated section of the grocery store near the cheese), a simple tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella. You can go with any sauce/cheese combo you like-- the Thor pizza would be really good as a barbecue pizza-- just make sure the cheese is white or lightly colored to give you a plain backdrop.
Because I'm cooking for just me, I decided to make three of the pizzas mini. You can totally make them full size, this is not a comment on their importance as Avengers, they just had the easiest designs to scale down and gave me less to fit in the fridge.
Finally, I remembered that red cabbage is purpley. I chopped it and gave it a quick saute in a hot skillet-- not long enough to make it soft, I just wanted to jumpstart the cooking process since it didn't get very long in the oven-- and used it to make a bullseye pattern.
So what you need are some chopped green peppers and olives, and some extra mozzarella for eyes and teeth. I found it easiest to start by outlining his mouth with the chopped olives. Fill it in with more olives, then add some little pieces of mozz for his teeth. Fill out the shape of his face with green peppers and cut out some eyes out of more mozz. Make the eyes kind of slanty and angry looking, but don't worry if the shape's not perfect since it will melt in the oven. Add tiny pieces of olives for the pupils.
Once you're satisfied with the size and shape of the head, outline it with more chopped olives. Use larger olive pieces for his hair and nose.
I totally meant to add some angry slanty eyebrows and some red onion (cause the Hulk is always wearing purple pants), but since it was one of the mini pizzas, I didn't have room.
Start by using the cheddar to draw a lightning bolt on the pizza, slightly off center, and then learn from my mistake and outline it with more chopped olives (the lightning bolt got a little lost after baking). Use the chopped olives to outline Mjolnir (rectangular head, long handle). Fill the head with shredded chicken and the handle with the sausage crumbles.
While your pies are baking, you can work on Cap's fruit pizza. Since this is a dessert pizza, the crust is a giant cookie. I used sugar cookie dough. Any roll out recipe would probably be best (I can recommend these from LilaLoa). I actually just bought a thing of slice and bake dough from the store since roll out dough and I aren't friends. Spread your dough into a pizza pan (I used a foil one) and bake at 350 (F) until it's a light golden brown. I baked mine about 16 minutes, but keep your eye on it. Let it cool completely. I actually baked mine before I started assembling the pizzas, so it could cool while I was working on them.
So for this fruit pizza, we're using whipped cream (about 1 1/2 cups after whipping), halved strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, sliced bananas (2 were more than enough for me), and mini marshmallows. Start by spreading your whipped cream evenly on your cookie base. Then work from the outside in on the design: start with a ring of strawberries around the outer edge of the cookie, then do a ring of sliced bananas. My bananas were small, so I doubled them up. If you're worried about browning, you can skip them or use large marshmallows in their place. I made a quick glaze out of apricot jelly, and they only looked slightly brown the next day
Inside the bananas, do a ring of raspberries (I meant to do a double ring, but I made the banana layer too wide, so there wasn't room). In the middle, use the mini marshmallows to make a star, then fill in the rest with blueberries. Use more raspberries to fill in any spaces between the strawberries.
