Jack O Lantern Pizza Rolls

These Jack O Lantern Pizza Rolls definitely need to make it into your Halloween lunch and dinner rotation! The all-butter homemade pie dough is wonderfully crisp, yet flaky and it perfectly sandwiches together the gooey pizza ingredients, like pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni.

Course Appetizer, Lunch, Main Course, Snack

Cuisine American, Italian

Diet Low Salt

Prep Time 45

Cook Time 20

Total Time 1 5

Servings servings

Calories 359kcal

Author Alana Lieberman

Cost $15

Equipment

baking sheet
food processor
pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter (at least 4 inches wide)

Ingredients

2 large eggs, divided
2 ½ tablespoons + ½ teaspoon ice cold water, divided
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
½ teaspoon kosher salt
10 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
¼ cup pizza sauce
10 small pepperonis, optional
⅔ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Optional: grated parmesan or flaky sea salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper.
In a small bowl, whisk together 1 egg and 2 ½ tablespoons cold water.
Add flour and salt to a food processor. Pulse a few times to combine.
Add the cubed butter to the food processor. Pulse again until it forms a crumb.
Pour in egg/water mixture. Pulse until it forms a thick dough.
If dough is sticky, place it in the fridge for about 10 minutes.
Flour a clean surface and a rolling pin. Form the dough into a disc and roll the dough over the floured surface until it’s ¼-inch thick.
Use the pumpkin cookie cutter to cut out as many pumpkin shapes as possible. Re-roll the dough scraps and cut more pumpkin shapes out of the remaining dough until you’ve used as much as you can.
Cut out jack-o-lantern faces on half the pumpkin-shaped dough, leaving the remaining pumpkin-shaped dough fully intact for the bottoms of the rolls.
If the dough is too sticky, you can place it back in the fridge for about 5 minutes to solidify a bit.
Place pumpkin dough without faces on the prepared baking sheet. Add 1 teaspoon of pizza sauce in the center of each pumpkin. Spread into a thin layer, leaving a little space around the edges. Top each one with 1 small pepperoni and 1 tablespoon shredded mozzarella cheese.
Place one jack-o-lantern dough on top of each pumpkin dough on the baking sheet. Use a fork to crimp the edges of the top and bottom doughs together to seal in the fillings.
Whisk the remaining egg in a small bowl and add ½ teaspoon water. Brush over the top of each jack o lantern face. Sprinkle the top of the dough with grated parmesan or flaky salt.
Bake pizza rolls for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the dough is lightly golden brown.

Notes

This recipes makes around 12 pizza rolls depending on the size of your cookie cutter.
You don't have to cut jack-o-lantern faces out of the dough if you don't want to. Instead, you can leave all (or half of) the dough in pumpkin shapes and just have some plain "pumpkin pizza rolls" as shown in the pictures above.
If you're short on time, you can use store-bought pie crust (though homemade is highly recommended!). Don't use pizza dough, as it won't hold its shape like pie dough would.
Make sure the eggs, butter, and water are cold when making the crust! If it's sticky, it'll be harder to work with. If needed, you can refrigerate the dough for 5 to 10 minutes to make it a little more solid and easier to roll/cut/shape.

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