Tissue Paper Snowflakes

This is a super easy craft, just changing up the paper snowflake we all made as kids. All you need for this is some colorful tissue paper and scissors. I cut a bunch of circles in different sizes and different colors and let the kids have at it. The only difficult part of this craft is to be careful not to tear the delicate tissue paper.

To begin, cut a circle of your desired size. Fold in half, and then fold in half again. Keep doing the folding until it gets to the size you want to cut. Cut some designs into all three sides of the triangle shape you have. You can do semi-circles, triangles, squares, whatever you want.. be creative. Just be careful not to cut all the way across or you'll have to start over. After cutting, carefully unfold and see what you've created.

Here are my three examples.

Homemade Pizza

We eat our fair share of pizza around here, and one of my favorites is the homemade variety. I don't remember where I came across this recipe for pizza dough, but I've had it probably about five years now and it's worth sharing. It's easy to make the dough, a little less easy to get it spread out onto the cookware for preparing and baking. Perhaps this is where my four months of working in a pizza shop 13 years ago comes in handy.

Ingredients for dough:
2 1/2 to 3 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/4 tsp fast rising yeast (1 envelope)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup very warm water
2 tablespoons oil (I use olive oil)

This dough makes two good sized pizzas, or as I prefer to do--one large pizza plus a side of cheese sticks.

In a large bowl, combine 1 cup flour, sugar, yeast, salt. Stir together. Gradually add water and oil to mixture and stir or blend at low speed until moistened and well mixed. By hand add 1 1/2 cups or so of flour until dough pulls away from sides of bowl. On a floured surface, knead 1/4 or so of a cup of flour until dough is smooth and elastic.
At this point, I tear away about 1/3 of the dough so I have two pieces, one smaller than the other. The smaller will be used for cheese sticks. If you want two pizzas instead, you can tear away an equal portion of the dough instead of just a third.
Cover the dough loosely with plastic and let it rest in a warm place for about 25-30 minutes.

After dough has rested and risen a bit I am ready to work with it. This is where the more difficult part comes in. It's important to work out the air bubbles in the dough. I don't have a fancy pizza pan, so I use cookie sheets for baking. I lay the dough down on the cookie sheets I use for the oven, with first sprinkling a dusting of flour on the surface. I use my palms and fists to flatten the dough down and work out the air. You can hold the dough in your hands and let it stretch to help with fitting it to the pan. (Next time I make this I will take pictures of the process to give a visual and make it easier to understand)

Dough may tear or form holes as you are working with it and trying to fit it to the pan. This is ok and can be easily fixed by pulling the dough together at the hole. Once dough is pressed out to your liking (be patient!), you are ready to put on your toppings.

For cheese sticks, I melt about a tablespoon of butter with a few shakes of garlic salt and brush that onto the crust. I then sprinkle mozzarella all over the top and it's ready to bake. It bakes at 450 degrees around 8 minutes or until it reaches your desired level of doneness. My cookie sheet for this is 9x13 inches.



For the pizza I use half of a 14 oz jar of store bought pizza sauce, which goes directly onto the pressed out dough. Then I add lots of mozzarella cheese, my favorite toppings, and then a little more cheese on top. This particular pizza has ground beef that I browned just before baking with cheddar cheese sprinkled on top. Pizza bakes in 450 degree oven around 10 minutes or so, or until it reaches your desired level of doneness. My cookie sheet for this is 16x13 inches.



Using cookie sheets instead of something made specifically for pizzas works fine, however know that the crust will not be as crispy with this method.
Have fun making this and choosing the toppings. Enjoy!