This Apple, Beet, & Caramelized Onion Pizza is sponsored by Autumn Glory. All opinions are mine alone.
I love, love, love pizza! We typically eat the standard Friday night delivery pizza loaded with cheese and pepperoni, but it’s a lot of meat and grease, so I wanted to make something that was a bit lighter, healthier, and more colorful with lots of fruits and veggies for spring. Thus, I created this Apple, Beet, and Caramelized Onion Pizza! It has a pink garlicky beet sauce and is topped with cheddar cheese, caramelized onions, crisp apples, and fresh thyme. Get ready for one of those “fancy restaurant pizzas” that you can make yourself at home!
I’m all about homemade, but I’m also a busy mom raising twin babies, so it’s probably more accurate to say I’m all about semi-homemade! Of course you can make everything from scratch if you prefer, but this recipe can be made quicker at home using some store-bought ingredients such as the dough, already steamed or roasted beets, and toasted pumpkin seeds. I am all about saving time where I can while still using fresh ingredients!
We do our grocery shopping once a week on Sundays at Trader Joe’s which is where I purchased everything for this pizza including the delicious Autumn Glory apples! Even before Autumn Glory reached out to me about collaborating on a recipe, my husband was already bringing home bags of Autumn Glory apples and the twins LOVE them! I use the apples in a blueberry, banana, apple muffin that I make for the twins or I grate a skinned apple over some peanut butter yogurt for them as a snack and they gobble it up!
Autumn Glory apples are great for snacking with hints of cinnamon and caramel! Autumn Glory apples give you the flavors of fall year round! There’s nothing that says you can only eat apples and pumpkin seeds in the fall! Let’s eat them in the springtime, too!
And, just look at that pink sauce! I mean, how can you resist a pizza with pink sauce? You can’t!
My mother-in-law was my taste tester for this pizza and she was pleasantly surprised by how much she liked it. She doesn’t normally enjoy the taste of beets, but she raved that this pizza is something you would expect to find at a fancy restaurant. She went on and on about the “medley of flavors” and how you could distinguish between all the different flavors in each bite with the garlicky beet sauce, the cheddar cheese, the caramelized onions, and the crisp Autumn Glory apples on top!
My father-in-law was my other taste tester, but because he likes everything I make, he’s an unreliable source. But for the record, he liked the pizza, too!
Here’s the recipe. Remember, I used a store-bought dough, store-bought steamed beets, and store-bought toasted pumpkin seeds which allowed me to quickly make this pizza “from scratch” at home. The beet sauce and the caramelized onions are the most labor intensive part of this recipe, but to make the beet sauce, you simply pour all the ingredients into a blender and blend, it takes about 5 minutes. And I made “quick” caramelized onions in 20 minutes using baking powder to speed along the caramelization.
If needed, you can find further instructions on my roasted beet pumpkin seed pesto sauce here.
This pizza has all of the flavors of fall within it, but it’s done in a fresh new way that makes it light and fresh for anytime of year!
Apple, Beet, & Caramelized Onion Pizza
Ingredients
- 1 store bought or homemade pizza dough
- beet pesto sauce ingredients:
- 2 cups roasted or steamed beets
- 1 cup pumpkin seeds
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 TB olive oil
- 1 TB white balsamic vinegar
- 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
- 1 lemon, divided
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
- 3 TB olive oil, divided
- 1/2 tsp Italian seasonings
- 1 1/2-2 cups white cheddar cheese, grated
- 2 Autumn Glory apples, thinly sliced
- 1 onion, caramelized (using 1/4 tsp of baking powder to speed up caramelization)
- 1/8 cup fresh thyme
Instructions
- Preheat your oven per the pizza dough manufacturer's instructions.
- Prep your beet pesto sauce. Combine roasted or steamed beets, pumpkin seeds, garlic cloves, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, grated parmesan cheese, juice from half a lemon, salt and pepper in a blender and mix until combine.
- Next, if you're using store bought store, roll out your dough onto a greased pan and pre-bake your dough according the instructions in order to avoid a soggy crust. I add 2 TB of olive oil and a sprinkle of seasonings to the outer rim of the crust during this initial bake.
- While the dough bakes, caramelize your onions with 1 TB olive oil and 1/4 tsp baking powder to speed up the caramelization process.
- Spread the beet pesto in the middle of the pizza, top with grated white cheddar cheese, add the caramelized onions.
- Next, thinly slice your apples and as you slice, add the apples to a bowl with a little bit of lemon juice to keep the apples from oxidizing.
- Lay out the apple slices in a fan shape, top with any extra onions and fresh thyme leaves.
- Bake for another 6-8 minutes or per your pizza dough's instructions.
- Once browned to your liking, remove from the oven, slice, and enjoy!
Elise Laney
Friday 29th of March 2019
Houston loves beets - I wonder what he would think if I made this pizza... :)