Minnie Eggplant Pizzas
Hey everyone! This week we’re very excited to share a new idea with you! 👏 We decided to start switching up our current weekly “Midweek Inspirations” with “Midweek Minnies.” So from now on every week, we’ll switch it up between the two.
The “Midweek Minnies” will come in the form of light bites, appetizers and kid-size meals. Sometimes, there is too sharp a divide between “toddler friendly food” and sophisticated dishes. I don’t really envision myself, or other parents of toddlers, serving Ants on a Long or PB and Js at a dinner party, but, hey, we also want our little ones to eat, right? But who feels like adding the extra task of preparing a separate dish when they’re already throwing a dinner party? 😩 And on the other hand, from a toddler’s perspective, there are times when typical “grown-up” meals can seem too sophisticated and boring, making a child disinterested in them.
Over here in our kitchen, we’ve been realizing that there are plenty of ways to make fun-size versions of healthy meals and dishes—ideas that will really give you the best of both worlds!
This week we’re starting off with some fun-size pizzas! 🍕 The best thing about these pizzas is… well, where do I start? There are so many great things about these!
First off, the “crust” consists of 1 ingredient—eggplant 🍆 (you could substitute zucchini or yellow squash for the eggplant if you don’t like eggplant or want to make them even smaller--if you do, just bake them for about 5 minutes less). So they’re really much healthier than a typical pizza.
Second, if you’re making them alone (without the assistance of your own minnie chef) and using store bought pizza sauce they’ll take no more than twenty minutes to make from start to finish. But I must say that they are so much fun to make with a little one—besides cutting the eggplant and putting them in/taking them out of the oven, my little helper did the rest.
While we were making these a certain someone decided to start "sampling" the mozzarella shreds in between sprinkling. I told her to make sure there was enough for the pizza. She said, "No, mom. My stomach is sneezing and wants me to eat this favorite cheese. If I don't, I'll get a tummy ache. After I'm done I can put some on the pizza." Yea, she's fierce. 👸🏼
Finally, they’re so delicious and fun to eat!
| Servings | Prep Time | Cook Time | Total Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 5 mins. | 20 mins. | 25 mins. |
Ingredients:
- 2 teaspoons of olive oil
- 1 large eggplant
- ½ cup of quality pizza sauce*
- 1 cup of Daiya mozzarella style shreds
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Lightly grease two baking sheets with olive oil.
- Slice eggplant into ¼ inch thick slices and arrange them on a baking sheet.
- Spoon approximately 1 teaspoon of pizza sauce onto each eggplant slice.
- Top each eggplant slice with mozzarella shreds.
- Bake for approximately 20 minutes, until eggplant is tender and mozzarella shreds have melted.
- Serve and enjoy!
*For the sauce, I used Trader Giotto’s (Trader Joe’s fancy Italian line 😉) Pizza Sauce. If you don’t have or can’t find pizza sauce, you can use a basic marinara sauce and just whisk 1 tablespoon of tomato paste into it to thicken it a bit, so that the eggplant won’t become soggy. Or you can always make your own preferred sauce!
Toddler Tip:
Once the eggplant has been arranged on the baking sheets, let your toddler spread the sauce and sprinkle the cheese onto each slice. If they do most of the work making them, they'll be more likely to take pride in their finished product and want to eat them!
