Pizza bites

With Jared on the slow carb diet we are always trying to find ways to cook meals that don't involve dairy, pasta, grains, fruit, almost anything white... and include more vegetables, legumes, and meats.  So when I came across this recipe on Pinterest for pizza bites made out of cauliflower I was intrigued.  We had tried cauliflower "mashed potatoes" before with mediocre success (they were pretty lumpy and tasteless) so I was a little skeptical about this recipe but decided to give it a try.  There are definitely things I would change, but overall, the result wasn't too bad!

I started my process with a head of cauliflower.

The recipe said to use a food processor to grate the cauliflower to "rice-like" consistency.  However, I could find every part of my food processor except the one that connected them all.  So I had to break out the hand grater.  It was definitely a messy process and I'll probably be finding cauliflower particles around my kitchen for a while, but it worked.

After that, I sauteed the cauliflower for a few minutes.

While the cauliflower was cooking, I blended some egg white, cottage cheese (strangely allowed on the diet in small quantities) and some spices.

It sure smelled good when it was done mixing!

I even added a little Frank's Red Hot sauce to "kick it up a notch".

Then I mixed everything together in a bowl.

Now, the recipe called for the mixture to be put straight into muffin tins, however the buzz on the internet was that this method is extremely hard to clean afterward as it bakes right onto the tins.  One website suggested just placing spoonfuls of the mixture onto parchment paper and baking it that way, but it seemed a little runny and I was afraid it wouldn't hold together during baking.  So lined the tins with cupcake liners and tried it that way.

Finally, I put a piece of turkey pepperoni on each one and let it bake.

The finished product smelled delicious and seemed to be pretty brown on top.

I let them cool for a bit and they came out of the paper pretty well.  They were still a little soft inside so I think if I had just used the parchment paper they would have come out a little more crust-like.   However, they tasted pretty good!  I dipped them in some marinara sauce and couldn't even tell they were made of cauliflower!

Overall I liked this recipe though I would change some things to make them a little more crunchy.  It was a messy enough process that I probably won't make these all the time, but it's a good recipe to mix things up every now and then.

If you want to try the recipe, I found it here.  Happy cooking!