You know you can make pizza in your pizza oven, but did you know you can use it to make dessert too? After a pizza party, we love to make a sweet pizza or throw in a cast-iron baked dessert to round off the meal. Since our sweet tooth is just about the same size as our pizza tooth, we’ve compiled a list of our top Ooni-baked desserts.
Before we share our favourites, here are a few tips to consider when cooking sweet things in your oven.
Parbake Your Pizza
When cooking dessert pizzas topped with sugary ingredients like caramel sauce, frangipane, marshmallows, or chocolate chips, you want to ensure that your base gets cooked before your top catches on fire. We recommend parbaking your pizza dough, a technique for cooking something part of the way, before finishing it with sweet sauces and toppings. For tips and detailed techniques , check out our blog, For Sweet Pizzas, Consider Parbakings.
Cast Iron is Your Friend
Not only does cast iron stay safe when cooking at the high temperatures of our pizza ovens, but it’s also a great, even conductor of heat that’s naturally non-stick. That makes it an ideal vessel for cooking pizza and cookies at high heat. It’s also wonderful for making easy crumbles and quickly fire-roasting fruits to be served with ice cream in the summertime.
Take Advantage of the Cool Down
Some of the things we love to cook in our ovens don’t need to be cooked at the top temperatures you can reach when you’ve got the flame at full blast. We love to make use of every moment of the heat, which is why you’ll see recipes on our site for recipes like Flame-cooked Sticky Toffee Pudding that take advantage of the oven even as it’s cooling down and the heat is gentler.
Now for some dessert inspiration….
The chocolate chip skillet cookie is a warm and gooey dessert that takes the classic chocolate chip cookie from an individual dessert to a shareable centrepiece. Baked in a cast-iron skillet and cooked under the heat of the Ooni oven flames, this oversized cookie boasts a crispy edge and a soft, chewy centre. We love it even more served warm with a scoop of ice cream.
Apple and pear crumble is a heavenly dessert that combines the natural sweetness of apples and pears with a crunchy, buttery crumb and oat topping. Cornwall-based recipe developer Grant Batty’s version puts all the best parts of a crumble into a blistered, chewy pizza dough calzone and serves it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Based on a famous chocolate cake out of the (now-defunct) Ebinger’s bakery in New York City, this pizza is a chocolate lover's dream come true. It has a decadent and rich combination of pudding, melted chocolate and chocolate cake crumble toppings on a crispy, cocoa-infused crust that mimics the original’s chocolate, pudding and icing layers.
Brown butter, buckwheat and a chopped chocolate bar set these cookies apart from a classic shop-bought batch. Ooni Volt is great for cooking a small amount of oversize bakery-style chocolate chip cookies whenever you’re craving some sweetness.
Pimm’s No. 1, the famous aromatic gin-based liqueur, marries beautifully with summer strawberries on this dessert pizza. A jam made with Pimm’s, strawberries and sugar is just the right combination of tangy and sweet. Post-bake cream, mint and shortbread add richness, herbal flavour and a buttery crunch.
Three dessert classics—poached pears, almondy frangipane, and Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread—come together to top this pizza. Prepping the pears and frangipane in advance makes this an easy dessert to whip up at the end of a pizza party.
