Meal in a Muffin: a muffin shaped calzone

In the continuation of my attempts with homemade pizza dough, I made for daughters and me a muffin shaped calzone. The only thing that makes this remotely muffin is that it is baked in a muffin pan. I'm not exactly sure if it is better to bake in the muffin pan but it certainly is interesting. Since I am a muffin morpher (doffins and chuffins) I figured why not mealuffins? (A meal in a muffin) It's really the only reason why I made them in this shape and most likely I wouldn't do it again. I think I would have preferred just the regular calzone shape for ease, but it was fun making the muffin shapes just for presentation.

The idea is off of epicurious.com and it is taken from Cookie, the magazine. I didn't do anything close to the original in terms of filling and just filled it with things from my fridge that I thought would go nicely together. I did a garlic spinach ricotta mozzarella marinara sauce filling...wow a mouthful to write and just as much of a mouthful to eat.

I found working with the leftover pizza dough from yesterday's post really easy - it was stiffer after it been in the fridge, but I just let it warm up a bit until it was pliable. Today, for more a more uniform shape, I opted to use a rolling pin to get the dough into round disks. It was a breeze to work with and I thought it was nice having the dough all ready and all it required of me was to stuff.

Spinach, Sausage, Ricotta, Mozzarella Mealuffins
Makes 8

8 golf ball size portions of pizza dough
8 oz baby spinach
2 sausages diced
4 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup ricotta
1/2 cup mozzarella
1/2 cup marinara sauce
1 tablespoon of milk
1 egg

Preheat oven to 375.

In a frying pan, over medium heat, cook sausage in garlic and olive oil. Add spinach and cook until wilted.

Roll out 8 pieces of pizza dough into 5 inch diameter disks, about 1/4 inch thick.

Grease muffin tin. Place each disk into individual muffin tins. In each dough-lined cup, put 1 tablespoon marinara. Then place 2 tablespoons of sausage spinach mixture, 1 tablespoon ricotta, and 1 tablespoon mozzarella cheese. Seal up the dough.

Mix together egg and milk. Brush the eggwash mixture on each mealuffin.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until outside is golden brown. Serve with extra marinara (my kids wanted it) if desired.

Printable recipe

This is a photo step by step for those who like visuals.

Golf ball sized balls of dough. (avocado is there as a size reference)

Flattened dough being filled with delicious fillings.

Mealuffins sealed and brushed with egg. Don't they look like Chinese Bao? I started laughing.

This is another shape I attempted - a more potsticker top in its styling.A mealuffin cut open.

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