Fruit Pizza

I never realized that Ben felt so fruit pizza-deprived as a child. I promise to make this for him the next time he visits.

The "pizza dough" is made of sugar cookies. Use your favorite recipe and cut the rolled out dough into circles. Place the circles, slightly overlapping, in the bottom of a buttered spring-form pan if you have one, making sure that the circles touch. You can also use a round pizza pan or even a cookie sheet. Pat down the dough a bit to be sure that you have one big piece of dough rather than a bunch of separate pieces. Bake at the temperature recommended in your cookie recipe for a little bit longer than recommended for single cookies or until slightly browned. Let cool slightly and carefully remove to a large serving plate.

Mix 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 8 oz. cream cheese, and just enough orange juice--one or two tbls.--to make the mixture spreadable. Spread the cheese mixture onto your cooled cookie base.

Now comes the fun part. Arrange a variety of sliced-up fruit on the cream cheese mixture. Kiwis are perfect, as are strawberries, whole blueberries, and bananas. Sliced star fruit would be nice; so would mandarin orange sections, or grapes cut in half. I'm sure you will be creative.

Warm 1/2 cup apricot preserves in a small saucepan over low heat. Add a tbl. of orange juice. Put this mixture through a sieve and brush the resulting glaze over the fruit, especially the banana slices, as this will keep them from turning brown.

Serve the fruit pizza the same day you make it. It is a beautiful presentation and tastes delicious, but I'm afraid it just isn't as good the second day (if you have leftovers).