The Weirdest Way to Cook Pizza

My sister and I were weird children. We did totally random things, like attempting to build zip lines in the back yard, catching chipmunks, and dressing up our cats and putting them in strollers.

One of the things we did was cook mini pizzas. On light bulbs.


Wow. Where did we come up with this, you might be wondering. Well, I'm not sure. I think it resulted from the simple realization that our mom cooked things in the oven. But the oven was Mom's, and we weren't allowed to use it without help. However, the lamps in our room—well, those were our lamps, and we didn't have to ask for permission to use them.

My Mom makes some excellent pizza, let me just say. But it always took quite a while for her to prepare it. Patience has never been my strong point, especially when I was a little kid. Therefore, the only logical solution was to make our own pizza.

For a while (maybe the first three or four times), we kept our creations a secret. Usually, I would distract my mom by asking her questions or sampling the various ingredients she had left lying about. Katie would clandestinely snatch a few precious clumps of pizza dough from the bowl. Perhaps she didn't allow me to do the dough-stealing because she knew I'd get carried away and steal enough to cook on fifteen lamps.

Next, we always ran to our room, and I complained every time that she hadn't gotten enough pizza dough. Usually there were two amounts about the size of a quarter, and I usually got the smaller amount because Katie said so. Anyway, we would press the dough onto the lightbulb, careful not to burn our fingers.

We watched it with fascination, not wanting to burn our mini pizzas. My sister and I always debated about how long to leave it there, but every time, without fail, we were able to recognize the distinct golden brown color they turned when they were done.

Next, we turned off the lamps and peeled off the mini pizzas. To finish, we added a little bit of sauce and cheese. They were delicious. It was just a shallow harbinger of the bigger pizza to come, but it tasted better because we had made it ourselves.

Who needs an Easy Bake Oven? We used light bulbs.