Pizza Pockets for school lunch

I had a request for this one. As I've said before, figuring out school lunches is always tricky. I love this one because the kids love pizza, but everyone loves different stuff on theirs. Plus, this way, I know what's going in their food.

I got the original idea from Pinterest (of course). This site has several other cute ideas that I haven't tried yet. Be sure to check it out here:

Ok, here's what I did. I buy the refridgerated Pillsbury artisian wheat pizza crust. Roll it out and cut it into several small pieces. I usually get about 15 squars out of it and that seems to be the perfect size for my muffin tin.

Then, using a silicone muffin tin so I don't have to use cooking spray, I put one piece of the dough in the bottom of each muffin cup. Obviously, you're putting a square peg in a round hole - but that's ok, you want the sides to stick up just a bit. Make sure you get all the air bubbles out form under the dough. With 15, there's obviously going to be a few oddballs, but that's ok. You can line as many of the muffin cups as you want/need. Keep the extra dough pieces to the side for now.

Then, put a spoonful of  sauce in each cup. You can use whatever kind you'd like. My secrect: I buy chunky vegetable marinara sauce, run it through the blender to smooth it out. Great way to sneak in a few extra veggies. Then top with a bit of cheese. Now, you've got individual pizzas. Some of my kids like chicken, some like olives, some like pepperoni or ham, so instead of fighting over what toppings we're doing, each child can have his/her own. (I also like to get the kids involved with this one. It's a super easy recipe and they can do their own toppings.)

Now, take an extra piece of dough and cover a muffin cup with it. Then pinch the edges of the top piece and the bottom piece together to kind of seal. Bake at 400 degrees for about 10-15 minutes. Final results look a bit like this:

Notice I only have about 3 pizza pockets, the rest are little pizzas. Not all of mine like the extra bread.

Someone has also asked how I keep them warm in the kids' lunchboxes. I don't have a great answer for that one. I do warm them up in the mornings before I pack them, but with one child not having lunch until nearly 1pm, it's hard to keep it really warm that long. Fortunately, my kiddos don't seem to mind too much.

In other blogs, I've seen posts by people that had trouble with the middle being doughy. I've never had that problem, but perhaps it's because I roll the dough out a bit before I cut it up. BUT- if you do have a problem, one suggestion was cooking just the dough in the muffin cups for a bit before adding the sauce and toppings.