Breakfast Fruit Pizzas Aren't Complete Without One Key Ingredient

A breakfast fruit pizza — fruit arranged over pizza dough for a sweet version of a pizza — is the perfect meal to make if you want to impress your guests at a brunch or simply want to make a special morning meal. But when it comes time to prepare the fruit breakfast pizza, there's one key ingredient that you can't leave out: a "sauce" base. Of course, typical pizza sauce is not going to taste great with the fruit toppings, so you'll need a suitable replacement. Ideally, you'll want to use something creamy to bring together the fruit and the bread — and keep the fruit in place on the pizza.

One idea is cream cheese — its subtle sweetness and mild tanginess makes it the perfect base. You can even sweeten up the cream cheese a bit by adding in a couple tablespoons of honey or maple syrup. Speaking of cheese, whipped ricotta will coat the dough with a layer of creaminess. Or, there's mascarpone cheese, which will provide a sweet, subtly nutty flavor. But if you want something super nutty, you can even use peanut butter — or any other nut or seed butter.

If none of these are sweet enough for you, you can try a simple frosting, such as a classic vanilla buttercream, as the base — just keep in mind that this will turn it more into a dessert pizza rather than a breakfast pizza. For a happy medium, you can opt for a light whipped cream instead.

After picking an ingredient for the base, it's time to assemble the breakfast fruit pizza. Of course, start with the dough — if you're feeling ambitious, you can make your own dough from scratch, or, to save time, simply use a store bought dough. You'll bake the dough on its own, following the dough's instructions, without any of the toppings. If you want a sweeter dough, some fruit pizza recipes use a sugar cookie crust — if you like this idea, you can borrow the crust instructions from our sugar cookie crust Dutch apple pie. You can lay out the dough in a rectangular shape on a baking sheet, or press it into a pie pan or another round dish, whichever you prefer or have available to you will work.

Once the dough has baked and cooled, spread the cream cheese or whipped ricotta or your preferred base across the top of the dough. Feel free to make the base as thin or as thick as you'd like. Next, it comes time to arrange the fruit — which you can pre-cut while the dough is baking — on the top. Any type of fruit will work, so it's entirely up to you — perhaps kiwi, strawberries, blueberries, and apples. You can arrange the fruit randomly or in a fun pattern or design.

Finally, for one extra ingredient, you can drizzle honey over the top. Or, to add a kick of heat to the sweet pizza, you can use homemade hot honey instead.