Blog With Friends: Earth Day

Today’s post is the next in our series of Blog With Friends theme collaborations. Each month a group of bloggers get together and each publish a project based on a theme. What I love about this partnership is that it’s not bloggers with similar interests or strengths but a diverse group coming up with a variety of posts. In any given month we may have a recipe, sewing tutorial, jewelry making, crafts projects, book review and/or technology post all related to the theme of the month.

There will be individual project pictures and links to what everyone else has to offer at the end of my post. There's also a blog hop there for you to link up your blog posts.

This month our theme is Earth Day. Here’s a peek at what we all came up with:

Thank you Sarah of The Momisodes for this month's collage

Here’s my project:

Celebration Dessert Pizza

I have to admit that I had a really hard time with this one. Don’t get me wrong, I love the theme but it’s a difficult one to bake for. I thought about maybe doing a vegetable dish instead, perfect for earth day, but this is way too early in the season for good fresh veggies around here. Gardens aren’t even planted yet and farmer’s markets haven’t started up yet and won’t for a few months.

And although I may have made cakes that look like dirt now and then, I certainly didn’t make them using dirt.

So on to Plan B. I decided to do more of an homage to Earth Day. I made a giant Earth Day cookie, perfect for any celebration. I started just with a sugar cookie base and baked it in a large pizza round (not the ones with holes in the bottom, that would not have ended well).

I used parchment paper and traced my shapes from a book, then cut them out to use as templates on the cookie.
NOTE: Although I used countries for my design, you can easily adapt this for any occasion or celebration.

For the ocean I used whipped cream and yogurt. Using fruits and nuts my son PurDude and I decorated the countries: USA, Canada, Greenland, Mexico and South America. Yes, the shapes are not exact once I laid in the fruits and nuts. Let’s just say I was going for less Classicist Art and more for an Abstract approach. Or we could say that I was going for Classicism but ended up with Abstract. Whatever happened, I’ll never tell.

Anyway, what it does not have in artistic merit, it does have in taste, so there’s that.

A word about Earth Day: Earth Day is about showing respect for our environment. It’s about acknowledging that we need to take steps to protect our resources for future generations. Although we set one day aside to celebrate Earth Day, a meaningful impact cannot be made on just one day a year, but in the choices we make every day.

Be sure to visit all of this month’s Blog With Friends projects:

Jennifer of Sparkly Poetic Weirdo shares Stretching Your Cluck, how to make a week’s worth of meals starting with one main item:

 
Lydia of Cluttered Genius shares her environmentally friendly DIY No-Sew Shopping Bag:

Eileen of Eileen’s Perpetually Busy has a tutorial for Upcycling Boxes and Other Containers into Storage Solutions.

Robin of Someone Else’s Genius shares a jewelry making tutorial for her Celebrating Nature Bracelet.

 

Melissa of Home on Deranged shares Ten Best Uses for Technology on Earth Day.

 

PS: I have been selected as one of the nominees in Dedicated2Life's Passionate People of 2015 awards. If you'd like to vote for me, you can do that HERE.

Celebration Dessert Pizza

                                                                            ©www.BakingInATornado.com
 
Printable Recipe
 
Ingredients:
1 stick butter, softened
1 stick margarine, softened
1/2 cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
 
1 cup heavy cream
2 TBSP powdered sugar
1 cup blueberry yogurt
 
Assorted fruits and nuts for decoration. I used: Blueberries, strawberries, plums, kiwi, sliced almonds, pecans
 
½ cup apricot preserves
 
Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees if baking immediately. 
*Spray a pizza pan (without holes in the bottom) with non-stick spray.
*Cream the butter and sugars. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Carefully beat or mix in the flour, baking soda and salt.
*Spread the dough evenly onto your prepared pizza pan. 
NOTE: The dough will spread onto your pan once prepared, but is easier to spread if you refrigerate for an hour.
*Bake for 15 minutes or until the cookie is browned. My pan is 16 inches, if yours is a different size you may need to adjust baking times.
*While cookie is baking, trace or draw your design onto parchment paper. Cut out.
*Remove cookie from oven and allow to cool completely.
*Slice any thicker fruits into thinner pieces.
*Beat the heavy cream until soft peaks hold. Beat in the powdered sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks hold. Fold in the yogurt. Spread over crust.
*Place your parchment paper cut-outs gently onto the cookie where you want the design to be. Make sure the side that you wrote on is facing up, not onto the food.
*Using a knife, gently trace the design, then remove the parchment paper. Fill in the design with fruits and nuts.
*Barely melt the apricot preserves. Using a pastry brush, “paint” the melted preserves over the fresh fruits.
*Keep in refrigerator and bring to room temperature only when serving.