Copycat Recipe - California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ Chicken Pizza

Hello! Happy New Year! We are close to the end of January and here I am fresh off my resolutionary agenda, which included "I MUST BLOG MORE" in the list ;-)

I'm back this time with a super easy pizza recipe that you can whip up in no time if you have a craving for pizza.

Or BBQ.

Or something hot out of the oven. Preferably topped with a lot of gooey cheese.

Or ALL OF THE ABOVE.

California Pizza Kitchen is a chain restaurant known for their incredibly thin pizza crusts and varied toppings with a distinctive California flair. The BBQ chicken pizza claims top honors as one of their most popular items  ever since it was introduced in CPK's first restaurant in Beverly Hills in 1985. Here is a quick and easy way to create it at home.

The following cast of characters are what you will need on hand (adapted from "America's Most Wanted Recipes"):

- Pizza dough - either go the store-bought route or whip up a batch of your own. I will admit I was always wary of store bought pizza dough after one particularly crappy cardboard-like experience in the past, and so I always preferred to make my own pizza dough, but I was recently surprised at the quality of the store-bought dough on hand at groceries now. Go for the freezer dough rather than the dried out-on-the-shelf brands.

- 2 cups cooked and cubed chicken - Again, if you have cooked chicken on hand, grab that, or use deli chicken, rotisserie chicken leftovers - anything that vaguely resembles chicken will do or quickly saute 1 boneless chicken breast in a splash of oil till cooked through.

- 1/2 cup BBQ sauce and a little extra for drizzling - whatever brand you have on hand. I got a bottle of free BBQ Memphis sauce on a recent grocery expedition, and this was my turn to try it out.

- 1 cup shredded mozarella cheese

- 2 Tbsp shredded Gouda cheese - I didn't have any, I substituted Monterrey Jack cheese

- 1/2 small red onion - sliced thin. I didn't have that either, I used regular yellow onions.

- 2 Tbsp fresh cilantro - chopped

1. Toss cooked chicken in half of the the BBQ sauce. Heat in a skillet over medium heat until the chicken is thoroughly coated and the sauce has reduced slightly and become thicker (about 3 minutes).

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. (If using store bought dough, use temperature on package).

3. Prepare pizza crust or follow directions to prepare store-bought pizza dough. Form the pizza dough into a circle and place on a baking sheet or pizza pan.

4. Spread remaining BBQ sauce over pizza crust. Top with chicken, cheese and onions.

5. Bake for 10 minutes or until crust is crisp and golden.

6. Sprinkle cilantro over pizza before serving. (Another option is to bake the cilantro with the pizza, but I personally found that it dried out the cilantro too much).

Copycat Recipe - Cinnamon Rolls

Hope all of you that celebrate Thanksgiving have recovered from this past weekend's food extravaganza, or better yet, have been revived out of turkey induced comas.

This year, I decided not to get crazy busy over the weekend by handing over Thanksgiving hosting duties to my sister-in-law in exchange for Christmas Dinner duty this year. Does anyone smell a whiff of procrastination again?

I even forced myself to sit tight and did not venture out into the maddening crowds for the annual Black Friday (start of the bumper Christmas season) Sales the day after Thanksgiving. And funnily enough, I had a great weekend, just spent sitting around with the family and relaxing.

One thing I did to was whip up a batch of cinnamon rolls/buns for Thanksgiving morning after seeing a imitation recipe in my subscription of Food Network Magazine. I am so thrilled with the results of this recipe, but sadly my photos do no justice to these sweet and pillowy buns.

Cinnabon is a popular pastry and baked goods take-out chain, most often seen in airports and malls and their fluffy cinnamon buns are to die for.

And I may be a little literal in the use of the word die - given they are an easy 880 calories per bun!

So even though we are using a recipe tested by Food Network Kitchen and not endorsed by Cinnabon (their recipe is top secret a la Coca-Cola and KFC), I still tried to do my part in reducing the amount of calories that went in. I've listed the original amounts of butter used (a whopping 12 Tbsp) and then my reduced amounts - yes, even I, of the I-think-pastries-should-be-its-own-Food-Group fame - thought that was just a tad bit too much fat.

The recipe is a cinch, however, it needs about 3 hours for dough rising time, so this isn't something you could just whip up when the neighbors pop over, unfortunately...for them! But trust me, everything else about the recipe is easy. It came together beautifully, even despite my meagre rations of fat and sugar. The buns tasted awesome!

Almost Famous Cinnamon Buns - adapted from Food Network Magazine November 2009.

Dough

1 cup milk (they used whole, I used 2%)

1 entire 1/4 oz packet active dry yeast

1/4 cup and 1/4 tsp granulated sugar, divided use

4 Tbsp melted butter and a little bit more to grease the bowl

1 large egg yolk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 3/4 cup AP flour
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

Filling

AP flour for dusting

2-4 Tbsp softened butter (they used 12 Tbsp!!)

1/4 cup granulated sugar (they used 1/2 cup)

3 Tbsp ground cinnamon

Glaze (I used only half the quantities of the original recipe, original quantity listed below)

2 cups icing sugar

1/3 cup heavy cream

4 Tbsp melted butter

1. Make the dough: Warm milk over low heat until it reaches about 100 degrees F. Remove from heat and sprinkle yeast and 1/4 tsp sugar. Do not stir, leave aside until foamy. Whisk in melted butter, egg yolk and vanilla.

2. Whisk the flour, remaining 1/4 cup sugar, salt and nutmeg in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add wet ingredients into dry, mix on low speed with a dough hook until thick, sticky and incorporated. Knead on medium speed for about 6 minutes till dough gathers around the hook. Sprinkle in additional flour if necessary up to a max of 2 Tbsp.

3. Remove the dough and shape into a ball. The dough will be very soft and sticky. Butter the mixer bowl, return the dough into it, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise until doubled, about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

4. On a floured surface, roll out the dough into a rectangle with longer side facing you.

5. Filling: Spread the softened butter over the dough. I found it easy to do with the back of a butter knife and patting on dabs of butter and smoothing it out gently. I barely used 3 Tbsp as opposed to the 12 Tbsp called for in the original recipe! Leave a 1/2 inch unbuttered alongside the farthest long edge.

6. Mix sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the butter.

7. Brush the unbuttered edge with a little bit of water, roll the dough away from you into a tight cylinder and press along the wet edge to seal (see pictorial above).

8. Cut the dough roll into equal sized portions, I got 11 rolls.

9.Spray a 9-by-13 inch baking pan with baking spray, place the buns cut side down in the pan and leave space in between. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise till doubled, about 40 minutes.

10. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

11. Bake the buns till golden brown, about 35 minutes. Remove from oven and let them cool in the pan.

12. Glaze: Mix the ingredients for the glaze and spoon over the rolls. This is where I probably could have used more glaze, I made only half of the original quantity and the rolls were still very warm, so the glaze got quickly absorbed and did not stay on top as the signature white layer you see on authentic Cinnabon buns.

Made no difference to me, they still tasted divine!

Sending these copycat cinnamon buns off to be Yeastspotted!