Florence and Jimmy have both been poorly today. We just couldn’t go out because at times they’ve both felt so rubbish that all they want to do is sleep.

Infant paracetamol is a wonderful thing though (I remember someone saying to me that when you have children it becomes your best friend – SO true!) and when they’re in the middle of a dose they have actually both been quite energetic. Florence didn’t want to go out anywhere (this is how I knew she was ill as usually the first thing she says is ‘where are we going today?’ but I knew she’d be bored if we didn’t at least do some at home activities!

I decided we would make Pizza and dough balls for tea and try to recreate Florence’s very favourite restaurant, Pizza Express at home! I wanted to really tempt her because you really don’t feel much like eating when poorly so it had to be something I knew she loved. I gave them soup for lunch and although Jimmy ate his Florence barely looked at hers. I always think you HAVE to have soup when you’re ill but not for my little girl obviously!

If you have an under the weather friend who DOES like soup however, I’ve heard about this really cool Heinz soup you can have made on a bespoke basis as a get well soon gift for £3.99! ‘Heinz Get Well Soup’ can be ordered on the Heinz Facebook page. You personalise it and send it to someone who is under the weather then a portion of the sales from each can sold will go towards Starlight Storytellers, an initiative run by Starlight that provides storytelling sessions for children in hospitals and hospices in the UK.

Anyway, back to my pizza! It’s really the doughballs Florence and Jimmy like because of the garlic butter dip so the true reason behind making pizza was so that we could make some of those too!

Home made pizza and dough balls!

For the pizza dough:

800g Strong white bread flour

200g Strong white bread flour (for your hands and the board when pushing the pizza out)

1 level teaspoon of fine sea salt

2 x 7g sachets of dried yeast

1 tablespoon of caster sugar

1 pint of lukewarm water

Method:

Put the flour and salt in a bowl and make a well in the centre.

Mix the yeast and sugar in the water and pour into the well.

Slowly mix it all together until it forms a ball then knead the dough for ten minutes. Flour the top of the dough, cover with clingfilm and leave for an hour. When rested you can divide the dough into as many balls as you would like pizzas. This recipe makes about 4 regular sized pizzas (which are to be pushed out thinly) or three and a portion of dough balls. Use the fourth portion to divide into little balls for the dough balls.

How to finish:

You can top the pizzas with whatever you like. I use a shop bought tomato sauce which I spread lightly on and today we used Italian meats, mushrooms, mozzarella and mascarpone cheese for two and caramelised onions and mozzarella without tomato sauce for another.

To make my garlic butter I chopped some parsley, pressed some garlic (we like lots but do it to taste) and mixed it in with slightly salted butter! The dough balls are fantastic dipped in the butter!

Pizza making!

Florence really can get involved in this sort of cooking from the pizza decoration to the making of the dough balls!

It’s super easy and with very little effort makes a really good result!

Cook the pizzas in a preheated oven at 250c for about 10 minutes and the dough balls take just a few minutes to brown.

Yummy home made pizza!

Florence really enjoyed helping make the pizzas and Jimmy just enjoyed the eating! 

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