As promised, here is the long anticipated Ms. Pacman Pizza recipe. The preparation for this is a bit less intensive than my Pacman cookies and one has the option of using prepared bread, sauce etc… So sit back and learn how to make a pizza that even the Mario brothers would be proud of.
First, do not cook or use the oven without an adult present!!! As I am no exception to this rule I asked my adult friend, former iD Tech UCLA Director, Jeff to come and supervise me:
First you need to make or buy pizza crusts. I can guarantee you that the whole throwing the pizza dough in the air thing would not have ended well for me, so I simply bought some pizza crust:
As alfredo sauce is white, it takes up food coloring really well so we’ll be making this an alfredo, white pizza. Here is a great recipe for alfredo that I found:
2 tablespoons butter
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 dash ground black pepper
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese
Melt the butter in your sauce pan then mix in the other ingredients and stir until they are all mixed in. I recommend a low heat and make sure to take it off the heat before it browns.
Next, you’ll be using food coloring to achieve the ubiquitous Ms. Pacman yellow color. I started off adding the food coloring conservatively:
But that just wasn’t cutting it so I added a bit more:
And that didn’t work either so I just went nuts and kept dripping it in until I achieved the color I needed, be prepared to use about quarter to a third of a standard bottle:
Stir thoroughly until the color is uniform:
Then carefully pour on to the pizza:
I spend a lot of time trying to smooth out the sauce and distribute it evenly around the edges and throughout the pie. Make sure that the sauce contours the crust otherwise Ms. Pacman won’t look properly round.
Next, there are several toppings we need to include to distinguish this pie as “Ms. Pacman” as opposed to simply “Pacman”. Those items, along with the ingredients you’ll need are;
A bow – Roasted red pepper slices and a tomato slice
A beauty mark – A black olive
Eye liner / eye shadow – Several sliced black olives and half of a green olive
Lipstick – 2 quarters of a tomato slice
Also, arranging items on a circular plane can be a bit confusing so I’ve provided a layout guide to demonstrate how Ms. Pacman is arranged. As you can see, the edges of her bow can be used to approximate the placement of her various design items:
As we are using the bow as the reference point for the rest of her details, we should start with that. For the sides of the bow we’ll be using a bouquet of roasted red peppers. Buy ‘em that way or roast ‘em yourself.
Note: BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN USING KITCHEN KNIVES AND ALWAYS HAVE AN ADULT PRESENT.
Cut them in half and lay them out flat. Cut around the edges to try and achieve this shape:
Make six and arrange three on each side in second quadrant of the pie (using the center of the pie as your origin), loosely arranged around a line that follows:
y = x + b, where b = the radius of your pizza crust:
Next, cut a thin slice of tomato and place it at the intersection of the following lines:
y = x + b (b = the radius of your pizza) and y = -x
That’s a pretty bow!
Next up is the beauty mark, which will be a whole black olive. For its placement, find the intersection of x = b/2 * -1 and y = b/2 * -1, where b is, again the radius;
Next is the eye shadow. Carefully prepare several black olive slices (I used 5) and half of a green olive. We will place the green olive first and then arrange the black olive slices around it.
Place the green olive at the intersection of y axis and the point along the tomato slice with the most negative value:
Finally, we will place the lips. Before we do, we have to determine the angle of the slice that will be removed from the pie to create her mouth. We are looking to achieve a 45 degree angle, I used pieces of spaghetti to help me approximate. Once it looks right to you, put your slices in place:
And it is time to bake! Preheat the oven to bake at 450 degrees and let Ms. Pacman bake for about 10-15 minutes, checking frequently as cooking time will vary depending on what kind of crust you are using. While you are waiting for it to bake, you should do something fun like playing hide-and-go-seek:
What I love most about this recipe is that it is not actually complete until you’ve eaten one of the pieces. If you used spaghetti as guides, the lines should still be there. Cut carefully and go over the cut several times, we need this to be clean! (Once again an example of "subtractive 3D modeling")
All done!
Happy holidays! If you try any of my recipes, please send me pictures, I'd love to post them!