The next time you are at the grocery store, pick up a few key ingredients and you might enjoy your next pizza night without the carb hangover in the morning. The following recipe is so simple, you can have pizza on your dinner table faster than if you ordered delivery. Everyone can pick their own toppings and the leftovers make a great school lunch for the kids. You can also make this in a toaster oven if you don’t have a conventional oven available.
Total time: 25 minutes
Servings: 4
- 16 oz premade pizza dough
- ½ cup pizza sauce
- ½ cup pesto sauce
- 1 cup button mushrooms
- 1 cup bell pepper
- ½ cup black olives
- 8 oz shredded mozzarella
- 1 cup fresh tomatoes
- 1 cup broccoli and cauliflower
- 6 oz sliced pepperoni
- 2 tablespoons flour
Preheat your oven to 475, then divide the premade dough into two round balls. Dust your workstation with flour to avoid sticking, and roll each piece of dough into an oval shape.
Using a large spoon, apply either pizza sauce or pesto onto the dough, leaving about ¼ inch of space around the edges.
Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese over the sauce liberally first, then pepperoni followed by your veggies. Try not to crowd your toppings too much as they will not be in the oven long. If you plan to use sausage or chicken, I’d recommend browning it in a pan beforehand to make sure everything is properly cooked.
Slide your creations into the oven for 8-10 minutes. When the edges of the crust and the cheese starts to brown, you are done!
Don’t forget to share your creation with us on social media! We would love to see what you and your family made together on Facebook, Instagram, or email us at [email protected].
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Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!
When I was a little girl, we’d run hard in the green grass, climb trees and make up dance routines until we were called in to dinner. Hearty, hot home cooked meals were prepared daily by my German grandma, Laura.
When we charged through the patio door into the kitchen, the intoxicating smell of onions and garlic immediately made you feel loved, even if it made your stomach grumble. While we’d wait for hot entrees to cool, we’d indulge in this refreshing cucumber salad.
I love how this pretty green salad balances out the other savory and sweet flavors you traditionally find at a BBQ, making it perfect for all your summer gatherings. The ingredients outlined below are simple, inexpensive and easy to throw together. It’s cool, crunchy, has the tiniest bite from the garlic (you can add more or less depending on your obsession – mine is quite strong). I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my family will be this weekend!
Ingredients
- 3 large cucumbers
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 3 tablespoons sour cream
- 3 cloves minced garlic
- 1 bunch of green onions diced
- Paprika for garnish
Peel your cucumbers and slice them very thin. Sprinkle with salt, mix very well and allow to stand until soggy.
Add all other ingredients (saving chives and paprika for ganrish) mix, garnish, serve and enjoy!
Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!
I seriously love these broccoli cheddar egg bites. They’re so flavorful (I think it’s all about the lemon zest), the recipe is simple and it yields so many yummy bites – they’re great fresh out the oven for brunch (great for showers, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day) or reheated on weekday mornings for easy, no-mess energy when you’re on the go. I’ve been making these free form on a baking sheet, but you can do muffin tins too (see how in the recipe I originally found that started this whole love affair).
- 4 cups broccoli
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/2 cup bread, torn in small pieces
- 1/4 cup onion, grated
- 1/4 cup mayo
- 1 cup sharp shredded cheddar cheese
- 2 teaspoons lemon zest
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Preheat your oven to 350, steam 4 cups of broccoli (I like to do this in my glass measuring cup in the microwave while I’m doing other things with the stove) and chop those florets up real good.
Beat your eggs and then add the torn bread, grated onion, cheese, mayo, lemon zest, salt, pepper and broccoli.
Line a large baking sheet with tin foil and coat with olive oil. Line heaping tablespoon bites on the sheet and bake at 350 for about 25 minutes until slightly golden on top. Remove the bites from the tin foil immediately.
When they’re warm, they’ll come up fairly easily – wait too long and the foil can stick to the bottom (which is one of the most delicious parts).
Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!
I’m hosting a small Easter celebration with some of my favorite people and kids this weekend. This playful dessert is sure to delight them and work as festive decor! I really enjoyed making these because piping the grass frosting isn’t hard and you can have kids help each step of the way if you want (we’ve got lots of other activities planned for this gathering, so I’ll keep the baking to a minimum day of – I’ll have kids who want to feel involved add their own jelly bean eggs).
I’ve outlined some tips below! Be sure to use #mothergooseclub on social media to share pictures and videos of your Easter baking adventures – can’t wait to see what you come up with!
- Place your stencil at the top fold and when you cut out your bunny, make sure the ears stay connected at the top, giving you two sides -front and back (though I just opted for doing bunny backs on each side since a tail is easier to draw than a face!).
- Use a crayon in a slightly darker shade to outline your bunny and add a tail – the outline really makes them pop and the tail is just so cute.
- Use hot glue to attach your craft stick between each side of your bunny and then add a few small dots to connect the paper bunny edges completely.
- Bake chocolate cupcakes with your favorite recipe – I just used a box from the supermarket.
- Add drops of food coloring to your frosting until you get your desired shade of green – I wanted mine to feel a little pastel and used about 12 drops.
- I placed the plastic frosting tip in the piping bag first to see where the frosting would come out, made a cut across the bag there and squeezed to get the tip in place.
- Spoon/spatula your frosting into your bag and frost.
- As you gently squeeze the piping bag, pull up and away to get the frosting to disconnect and create the grass effect.
- Finish with a few colorful jellybeans for Easter eggs!
Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Today I’m celebrating with a super easy green smoothie recipe (as well as my emerald green eye shadow, lime green nails and green cheetah print jacket – I’m ready)! It’s got a light and fresh flavor with some natural sweetness (not to mention a great green color to get you in the St. Paddy’s Day spirit). This recipe yields about one and a half servings, so adjust portions as needed!
Ingredients
- 1 cup Greek yogurt (I use Fage 2%)
- 1/2 banana
- 1/2 avocado
- 1 overflowing handful of baby spinach
- 1/2 honey crisp apple
- 1/2 cup blueberries
- 1/2 cup to 1 cup ice to taste
- Juice from 1/2 a lime squeezed
- 2 tablespoons chia seeds
- Honey to taste (optional)
Simply add all the ingredients to your blender (I recommend adding in the order listed especially if like mine, your blender isn’t the strongest). Add the ice after everything else is pretty well blended and save the sweetness for the end. Pour into a glass where you can enjoy the pretty light green color and use a straw or not. I love straws, but I know they’re not great for the planet, so I opt for stainless steel straws I can wash and reuse – talk about green living!
Smoothies are a great way to get your fruits and vegetables (with their fibrous skins) in for the day, and taking 15 minutes to handle the beautiful ingredients to whip up something yummy is a treat in and of itself.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Clara is a fan of Mother Goose Club and a contributing writer for our blog. She is a mother of two daughters and lives in New York City. She is passionate about food and loves to tinker with recipes to make it easy for busy moms. Her daughter, Beatrice, is often her sous-chef in the kitchen on weekends. She believes sharing the love of cooking with children can foster joy, connection, creativity and healthy eating habits.
After the holidays, many of us want to take a break from cooking. And as the temperature starts to drop, I always crave warm soups!
Vegetable soups are great because they’re easy to make, they can feed everyone in the family (including young children), and leftovers can be frozen and saved for the next meal.
One of my favorites to make at home is organic butternut squash soup. It’s so much better than buying soup out of a can. This one has no preservatives and you can control the sodium amount. It also takes less time than you think!
Ingredients:
• 2lbs of pre-cut organic butternut squash cubes (many groceries store-sell pre-cut pieces so the hard work is done and saves a ton of time)
• 1 tablespoon of Celtic salt
• 1 tablespoon of fresh ground pepper
• 1 can of unsweetened organic coconut milk (I like the Native Forest brand below), or heavy cream
Steps:
1. Boil the squash cubes in a large pot for about 10 minutes. Make sure there’s enough water to immerse the pieces.
2. Once the squash is softened, transfer it to a bowl and let it cool for a few minutes.
3. In a blender, put the cooked pieces with 2 cups of its cooking liquid and add the can of coconut milk. Add salt and pepper.
4. Blend away for 2-3 minutes (I love to use my Vitamix blender as it can blend hot liquids – with other blenders, you may have to let the ingredients cool down before blending).
And voila! You will have yummy soup (about 6 cups, or 48 ounces) to last you for several meals. I like to save leftovers in Ziploc bags or containers. I date and freeze them, and when I’m too tired to cook, I just defrost them and dinner is ready once again!
Cheers to joyful cooking,
Clara
Clara is a fan of Mother Goose Club and a contributing writer for our blog. She is a mother of two daughters and lives in New York City. She is passionate about food and loves to tinker with recipes to make it easy for busy moms. Her daughter, Beatrice, is often her sous-chef in the kitchen on weekends. She believes sharing the love of cooking with children can foster joy, connection, creativity and healthy eating habits.
One of my secrets in the kitchen is incorporating math while teaching my daughter how to cook. Cooking is a terrific way to introduce simple mathematical concepts, allowing children to begin conceptualizing and understanding addition, multiplication, fractions, number order, ratios and more.
So what is a good recipe that’s doable for kids? Pancakes! Our family eats gluten-free, so we use a pancake mix called Pamela’s Baking & Pancake Mix, found on Amazon at the link below. It tastes so good that even my friends who aren’t gluten-free absolutely LOVE it. It comes with simple, mistake-proof instructions on the back.
How do I use pancakes to teach math? First, I ask my daughter to measure how many cups of the mix we need to make for the number of people we plan to serve. If the package says you need 1 cup of the mix for 4 people, how many cups do we need for 8 people? Voila – 2 cups it is!
We love adding bananas into the pancakes – it naturally adds that extra sweetness. I ask my daughter to slice the bananas into equal parts, which teaches basic division and cutting skills. If each pancake needs 5 slices of banana, how many do we need to make 8 pancakes? 40 banana slices!
Next, we add the eggs. Encourage your child read the directions on the package to decipher the amount needed.
Make sure to use another bowl to crack the eggs, since little pieces of shell can fall into the mixing bowl. You can also introduce a concept called mise en place, a French culinary term that means “everything in its place”, so that your family can cook more efficiently and safely.
Time to mix the batter! Kids LOVE this part – one less task for the parent!
Fire up the stove, use a little coconut oil in your pan to give the pancakes a nutty flavor, and scoop your batter into the pan. You should wait until bubbles form at the edge of the pancake as it cooks, and then flip it just once.
An opportunity to instill patience!
Now the best part – pouring maple syrup on top!
Sometimes I ask my daughter to cut the pancakes in halves or quarters as a serving size, which illustrates division in a real-world way.
You can also add blueberries, walnuts and other ingredients of your choosing. Kids love chocolate, of course. I like to use Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips, which can also be found on Amazon below. They’re dairy-free, soy-free and nut-free.
And there you have it! In just 20-30 minutes, thoroughly delicious and healthy pancakes for the family! Plus, we learned some math along the way! It’s become one of my favorite activities to do on a Saturday morning. The most important part is the quality time – be creative and have fun with it together!
Cheers to joyful eating,
Clara