Christmas Tree Pizza Bites- Best Party Appetizer

If you love pizza bites, these Christmas tree pizza bites will be the highlight of your party as an appetizer.

These pizza bites are the best finger food out there, and I’m sure your guests would love them.

They are quick and easy to make. You can make more than one batch in a single go if you have a large oven space making this recipe perfect for parties.

These pizza bites can be stuffed with any filling of your choice, and you can also swap a few stuffings according to what you have in the kitchen.

If you do not want to make them in Christmas theme molds, you can just shape them like pizza bombs and cook them in the oven. Either way, they taste delicious.

Let’s make this quick and easy pizza bites recipe that I made using some leftover pizza dough.

If you do not have leftover dough, you can make this quick-rise pizza dough by following Bobby Flay’s pizza dough recipe that doubles in 4-5 hours.

Ingredients and Substitutions

Pizza dough- As suggested above, you can use leftover, store-bought, or make pizza dough for this recipe.

But there are other options as well; you can use Pillsbury pizza dough, crescent rolls, or anything that can replace pizza dough for this recipe.

Pizza Sauce- Since you need a dollop of sauce for the filling, make sure to have a thick pizza sauce.

The less the water content, the easier it is to fill these as these bites have very little space to fill them with anything, so make sure to cook the pizza sauce to make it as thick as you can so it doesn’t burst out of the pizza bites.

Filling- I have used bell peppers and finely chopped mushrooms sauteed in salt and pepper, but you can use any filling you like, including meat filling.

Cheese- I have used mozzarella cheese here, and you can use any cheese you like; make sure it is dry cheese as if it is wet; it could again make it difficult to make these bites.

You have to ensure that these bites stay intact; otherwise, if they burst midway while cooking(it can still happen, but we need to make sure there isn’t a LOT), then all the filling can ooze out of the pizza bite, leaving you with an empty pizza bite while the filling has poured outside.

How to make these Christmas Tree pizza bites

1. Roll out some pizza dough on a flat surface.

2. In a pan, take some finely chopped bell peppers and mushrooms, add salt and pepper, and saute until the moisture is gone.

Place a dollop of pizza sauce on the dough, add bell pepper, mushroom filling, mozzarella cheese, and pinch and close the edges.

3. Once you have closed it, you can take this dumpling, fill it up in the mold, and press it firmly so you know it is stuck perfectly to the mold and takes its shape. Press it down once again so it takes the shape of the mold.

4. Cook it in the oven at 200 °C for 12-15 minutes. Remove it from the mold and cook the other side for 5 minutes at the same temperature.

5. Your pizza bites are ready.

Tips to Make the Perfect Pizza Bites

1. The cooking time will depend on the kind of mold that you use and how big the pizza bites are. If the pizza bites are big, you might need to cook them for 5 minutes. But if the pizza bites are very small, then 13-15 minutes is a good enough time.

2. When you turn around the pizza bites and cook them for an additional 5 minutes, you do it to get a nice color on the pizza bites. They are already cooked at the 15-minute mark.

3. You can brush some egg wash on the pizza bites so they get a nice color on the top side of the pizza bites.

4. I have used a silicone mold here; hence, you do not get the nice brown color on the side where you have the design. You need to flip it and cook it with the design side up.

If you get a metal mold, then you won’t have to flip it and cook it, as metal molds are good conductors of heat and would cook these bites on both sides evenly.