Sweet Rhubarb Pizza ♥ Fun Summer Recipe

So here's a seriously fun recipe, a sweet fruit pizza with rhubarb. The "pizza crust" is made with a simple cookie dough (rolled thin, just like a thin-crust pizza). The "tomato sauce" is rhubarb (sweetened and reddened with jello powder!) and the "pizza cheese" on top is a crumbly streusel, just butter, sugar and flour. Sound, um, interesting? It's easy to make and surprisingly good! But is it really pizza? Nope! Instead, it's rhubarb bars baked on a pizza pan and sliced in pizza triangles or in St. Louis-style pizza squares.

A Fun New Recipe for Rhubarb, Fast & Casual. No Mixer Required. Budget Friendly. Potluck & Party Friendly. Happiness Quotient 100.

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Fun Food, For Sure.

"Is it healthy?" asked the first taste tester, age eight, upon learning that the rhubarb atop her slice of rhubarb pizza — yes, you've read that right, rhubarb and pizza in the same sentence — is botanically a vegetable. Uh. No. Rhubarb pizza is hardly a "health food" but it sure is "fun food"!

But hey, if laughter contributes to good health, that qualifies rhubarb pizza as health food, yes? Okay, not. Still, this rhubarb pizza was truly much fun and it ranks right up there with the recipes for Kool-Aid Pickles and Green Smoothies as outright food oddities.

The recipe comes from my dear Auntie Karen, who always writes when she collects a big pile of rhubarb from a good neighbor. So when I made the rhubarb pizza, using a recipe she shared a couple or more years back, I wrote her too, saying, "I finally made your rhubarb pizza! It's excellent!"

Imagine, a few hours later, my surprise while flipping through a box of old 3x5 recipe cards: the exact same recipe, clipped from a magazine many years ago. Ha! The universes collide.

But How Does It Taste?

Rhubarb pizza tastes better than it sounds. It's essentially a thin cookie topped with rhubarb whose color and sweetness have been bumped by a box of strawberry jello. True, it's very sweet, but the sweet-sour mix of sugar-rhubarb is oddly addictive. I was muchly glad it didn't last long since all the taste testers loved it, kids and grown-ups alike.

About This Recipe

Rhubarb Pizza is not your everyday savory pizza pie! Instead, its looks mimic a pizza, with a thin cookie crust (for the "pizza" crust) and finely diced rhubarb boosted with jello powder (for the "tomato" sauce), a streusel topping (for the "cheese"). It's really not pizza, it's a rhubarb bar cut in pizza slices or pizza squares. (Pizza squares? You bet. Especially if you're from St. Louis where the local Imo's Pizza is cut in squares.) It's a weird combination but hey, it's totally fun and tasty!
Distinctive Ingredients = rhubarb + jello powder + streusel topping
Ingredient List = flour + baking powder + salt + butter + egg + milk (for the Pizza Crust) + rhubarb + jello (for the Rhubarb Topping) + sugar + flour + butter (for the Streusel Topping)
It takes about 30 minutes to get the pizza in the oven, about 45 minutes to bake, then time to cool and cut.
The slices/squares are quite pretty. You're not quite sure what you're seeing, though!
How many servings does the recipe yield? That depends. Cut in traditional pizza slices, let's say 16. Cut in small squares, let's say 3 dozen.

How to Make a Sweet Rhubarb Pizza

The detailed recipe is written in traditional recipe form below but here are the highlights in four easy steps. You can definitely do this!

MAKE & SPREAD THE CRUST No electric mixer is needed, just a bowl and some sort of spoon for mixing. Combine the dry ingredients, then work in the butter with a fork or even your hands. Pat the dough onto a buttered pizza pan; if the pan has little holes, you might want to roll it out on a floured surface with a rolling pan first, then move to the pan and finish spreading the dough to the pan's edges. Super easy!
SPREAD THE RHUBARB AND GELATIN POWDER ACROSS THE DOUGH Just scatter the rhubarb first, then the gelatin powder, as evenly as you can, all across the pizza crust, all the way to the edges.
MIX & SPRINKLE THE STREUSEL TOPPING ACROSS THE RHUBARB Once again, no electric required to mix the streusel, just a bowl and a spoon or fork, then scatter bits of it evenly across the top. PS What is "streusel" [pronounced [STROO-sel]? It's the crumb topping for muffins, snack cakes and here, a "pizza". For more information, scroll down a bit in my recipe for Banana Streusel Muffins.
BAKE for about 45 minutes at 350F/180C, the crust will become crisp, the rhubarb will soften and the streusel will turn all buttery-good.
THAT'S IT! I told you this was easy!

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SWEET RHUBARB PIZZA

Hands-on time: 30 minutes
Baking time: 40-45 minutes
Time to table: at least 3 hours, allowing time for cooling
Makes 16 pizza slices or 36 2-inch squares

PIZZA CRUST
1 cup (125g) flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons butter, diced small
1 egg whisked with 2 tablespoons milk
A little extra flour, if needed for rolling

RHUBARB TOPPING
3 cups (about 12oz/340g) finely chopped rhubarb
1 small box red gelatin powder (i.e., strawberry Jello, raspberry Jello, etc. sugar-free is fine)

STREUSEL TOPPING
1 cup (200g) sugar
1/2 cup flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 62g
6 tablespoons salted butter, melted
A little salt (if using unsalted butter)

PREP WORK Heat the oven to 350F/180C. For the Crust, dice the 2 tablespoons of butter (and put it in the bowl you'll use to mix the Crust) and whisk the egg with 2 tablespoons milk (and set aside) and set up an area to roll out the crust (getting out the rolling pin and extra flour too). For the Rhubarb Topping, cut up the rhubarb and open the gelatin envelope (set aside). For the Streusel Topping, melt the 6 tablespoons butter, that's the rest of the stick (use a little to butter a 13-inch pizza pan, set the rest aside). Okay, finally, you can just roll through getting this pizza guy in the oven!

CRUST If you haven't yet, butter a 13-inch pizza pan. In a bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. With a pastry cutter or a fork or your hands, work the butter into the dough until it becomes quite crumbly and the butter is well-distributed. (The technique is similar to making a pie crust except that you want the butter pieces to get very small versus large for a pie crust.)

Stir in the Egg-Milk mixture to form a dough.

Form the Pizza Crust on the pizza pan, either by rolling out first with a rolling pin and finishing with your hands (recommended if your pan has small pinholes) or just using your hands. To use your hands, press the dough onto the pizza pan, working slowly, wetting fingers a bit if they're sticky.

RHUBARB TOPPING Top the crust with rhubarb. Sprinkle the red gelatin evenly over the rhubarb.

STREUSEL TOPPING Mix the sugar, flour and melted butter then use your hands to scatter evenly over the Rhubarb Topping.

BAKE Bake for 40 - 45 minutes until done, the crust's edges will be crispy, the Streusel Topping bubbling.

COOL Let cool for an hour or more, then cut into pizza slices (or Imo's St. Louis-style, in squares, for smaller pieces). For storage, separate layers with wax paper and store in the fridge. FYI I especially like these bars served cold straight from the fridge!

ALANNA's TIPS & KITCHEN NOTES
PREP WORK This recipe is really easy but I do find it much easier to do more prep work than usual, just getting individual elements done so that once I start to mix, all those elements are ready and waiting. This is totally not my style, by the way, but here, it just makes things easier.

PIZZA PAN I use a non-stick pizza pan that has tiny pinholes across the bottom. If yours does too, let me share two tips to avoid butter and dough pressing through the pinholes, scattering everywhere. First, butter the pan with a buttery butter wrapper (it gets buttery in the microwave) or even just the butter wrapper, using a bit of either soft or melted butter. Second, it's easier to roll out the Pizza Crust on a floured surface using a floured rolling pin, then finish spreading it across the pizza pan with your hands. A third idea? Line the pizza pan with parchment, covering those pinholes.

STICKY DOUGH? If the Pizza Crust dough is too sticky to work with, flatten the dough into a disk the size of your palm, wrap in waxed paper and chill for 30-60 minutes.

RHUBARB The redder the rhubarb, the redder the Pizza will turn out. That said, even a green-colored rhubarb will taste just the same and the gelatin will create some semblance of red. Both Auntie Karen's recipe and my magazine recipe say that frozen rhubarb will work too. My sense is that it would be better to start with still-frozen fruit rather than thawing it first.

JELLO I use a small box of sugar-free jello for Rhubarb Pizza, it weighs .3 ounces. The equivalent small box of regular jello weighs 3 ounces. Go for a brighter red gelatin vs something darker like Dark Cherry.

HOW TO MELT BUTTER IN THE MICROWAVE To melt the butter in the microwave: cut it into pieces and place in a microwave-safe container; loosely cover the cubes with the butter wrapper; run the microwave 10 or 15 seconds at a time until the butter melts.

STREUSEL TOPPING Next time, I'm tempted to use brown sugar for a little more color. I'm also going to try working cold diced butter into the flour and sugar versus melted; I think it might be a little prettier after baking.

4TH of JULY RECIPES How about adding a few blueberries for a red-white-blue dessert? But I couldn't figure out what to use for the white. Any ideas? A few mini marshmallows?!

MORE FRUIT PIZZA IDEAS And hey, what about "pepperoni" fruit pizza made with lime jello and kiwi slices?! This could get really fun, a good project with kids. Let's get creative!

FOR MORE INFO If you "skipped straight to the recipe," please scroll back to the top of this page for ingredient information, ingredient substitutions, tips and more. If you print this recipe, you'll want to check the recipe online for even more tips and extra information about ingredient substitutions, best results and more. See https://www.aveggieventure.com/2008/07/rhubarb-pizza.html .

NUTRITION INFORMATION
Per Pizza Slice, assumes 16 slices & sugar-free jello: 158 Cal ; 3g Protein; 6g Tot Fat; 4g Sat Fat; 27g Carb; 1g Fiber; 13g Sugar; 116mg Sodium; 27mg Cholesterol. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 3 & PointsPlus 4 & future WW points.

Per 2" Square, assumes 36 squares & sugar-free jell: 70 Cal; 1g Protein; 3g Tot Fat; 2g Sat Fat; 12g Carb; 0g Fiber; 6g Sugar; 52mg Sodium; 12mg Cholesterol. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 2 & PointsPlus 3 & future WW points.

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