Rainbows -- edible, adorable, easy, can be gluten-free and vegan
Extreme cute edible vegetarian rainbows! Fairly easy to make, wildly adorable, healthy, and yummy! This is one excellent recipe!
Prep Time45 minutesmins
Cook Time15 minutesmins
Total Time1 hourhr
Course: Dinner
Cuisine: American
Author: Valerie Mates
Ingredients
Base
EITHER: your favorite pizza doughenough for two pizzas
OR: The following ingredients
2cupstapioca flournote that if you buy "Letz Do Organic" brand, a box holds 1 1/2 cups, so you will need to start a second box
2teaspoonsbaking powderor 2/3 teaspoon baking soda + 2/3 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2teaspoonsalt
1/4cupcanola or olive oil
6-7tablespoonsof waterstart with six, add the other one if needed
1teaspoondried oregano
2eggsor, if you prefer vegan, you should be able to replace them with flax eggs, but I have not tried this recipe that way
Peppers
4bell peppers -- one each of redorange, yellow, and green (if you have a choice, red should be a wide pepper, then orange, then yellow, and green should the skinniest -- but if your peppers aren't in those sizes, it's fine)
Preheat the oven to the temperature recommended for your pizza dough recipe.
If you are using my dough recipe, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Then, except for the water, put all of the ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Add six tablespoons of water and stir. This should make a batter that is thick but pourable. If it is not pourable, add the other tablespoon of water and stir again.
If you are using my dough recipe, use two awesomely nonstick cookie sheets, or regular cookie sheets with silicone mats on top. Make 16 tiny pizzas, using one dinnertable tablespoon of batter for each pizza, and spreading out each one into an oval about 2-3 inches by 3-4 inches. Bake for 10 minutes.
If you are using other dough, roll out blobs of dough to be about 2-3 inches by 3-4 inches and the thickness of a pizza crust. You may have extra dough left over. Bake according to the directions for your dough.
Peppers
While the bases bake, cut up the peppers. Cut a circle around the stem and remove the stem. Now, with the hole where the stem was at the top, look at the ribs of the pepper. Cut from top to bottom along three of the ribs that are spaced on different sides of the pepper, ideally dividing the pepper into thirds -- but it is okay if the ribs aren't spaced evenly and your three pieces aren't very exactly equal. Trim off any seeds and ribs on the inside of each section, and rinse it out.
Next, cut off the uneven part on the top of each section, then cut crosswise across each section about 1/4 inch apart, so that you get six arcs. There will be a bit of extra left over at the bottom. (If your pepper is especially large or small, make your cuts a little bigger or smaller than 1/4 inch apart.) The idea is to end up with 18 arcs of pepper in each of the four colors.
Clouds
Use a good blender to blend all Clouds ingredients until they form a very smooth cream. My food processor doesn't make this smooth enough, but my blender does.
Assembly
When the bases are baked, put four arcs of bell pepper on top in the shape of a rainbow, with red, orange, yellow, and green going from top to bottom. It's helpful to press the arcs together to get them closer together. For arcs that aren't arc-shaped, feel free to break the piece as needed to make it more arc-shaped. You should have a couple of pieces of each color of pepper left over at the end; you can break those into pieces and use them to extend short arcs to be longer.
Next, use a dinnertable teaspoon to plop about a teaspoon of the cashew mixture at each end of the rainbow arcs (that is, use two teaspoons of cashew cream, one teaspoon on each end of the rainbow).