4th of July Fruit Pizza

I have been SO hungry for fruit pizza lately.  I have been scouring Pinterest for yummy looking ones, but nothing I found quite hit the spot, probably because I am so picky. I wanted a shortbread-y crust, like lemon bars, and a creamy base for the fruit to sit on. Everything I found either had a chewy crust or a glazy base for the fruit, or wasn’t chocolate, or took exotic ingredients or… you get the picture.  Finally I decided I was going to have to mix and match several recipes to get exactly what I was looking for.  And it totally paid off.

Chocolate Shortbread crust:

1 cup flour

¼ cup cocoa powder

½ cup powdered sugar

½ cup butter

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp vanilla extract 

Cream butter; add vanilla, salt and powdered sugar and stir well. Then add flour and cocoa powder. Mixture will be slightly crumbly. Press into the bottom of a sprayed 9x9 pan and poke with a fork in several places. Bake at 300 for approximately 25 minutes. It’s kind of hard to know that this is done. If in doubt, cook 5 minutes more, but do not over-cook or it will be TOO hard.

Creamy “sauce” 

8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

½ tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup granulated sugar

Cream all ingredients together. Spread on top of cooled chocolate crust.

Strawberries

Blueberries

Raspberries

Other fruit, if desired. I just used the above berries, since I was going for a patriotic pizza, but on other occasions, I think that kiwis, mangoes, mandarin oranges or anything else would be REALLY awesome. Place fruit on top of creamy “sauce” and press down slightly to make it stick. Refrigerate for at least ½ hour; cut and serve.

This turned out to be exactly what I was dreaming of! Sticking it in the fridge for a while made it so nice and cool, a perfect relief from the humidity we’ve been having lately. Delicious!