Saw a pic that went viral on Facebook and just had to make these Pepperoni Rolls

The image that inspired it all.

Have you seen that picture there on the right there? That one with those delicious looking pizza bite things? Sure you have. The damn thing has been all over Facebook and Twitter.

Unlike many people who just saw this pic and replied with Yum or OMG WANTZ! or whatever, I actually decided that looked so good that I had to make it.

So I did a google image search and found the original source. I had to do a search because most of the shares of the picture have that nice watermark in the bottom corner cropped off. Note: don't do this people, if something this awesome comes up, give credit where credit is due.

So that image search led me to The Gunny Sack, a decent food blog with tons of recipes and other tips and tricks. I thought it was cool to find out that these pizza balls were the authors first ever recipe post and the fourth post ever put up on the blog.

My helpers flattening and stacking

So anyway. I saw this great looking pic, decided I wanted to make these myself, did a bit of digging and found the full recipe here: Easy Pepperoni Rolls.

Amazingly it was pretty much as easy as it looks. First I had to pick up some ingredients. As usual I rushed things a bit. While out for groceries last weekend I saw a bag of pepperoni and said to my wife "Hey I can make those pizza ball things" and we bought it. I knew that the recipe called for Pillsbury Biscuits, so I grabbed one of those as well. I also needed cheese. This one I decided to save up for.

Just before wrapping

Here in Windsor we are known for having really good pizza. Windsor Style Pizza is a thing. Something people have tried to duplicate in other regions. For many years it was a secret as to part of what made Windsor Style Pizza so good. A couple years ago that secret finally got out. It's the cheese. Specifically mozzarella cheese made right here in Windsor by Galati Cheese Company LTD. Since the cat got out of the bag every pizza place in the city now has "made with real Galati cheese" signs on their doors and menus. I needed some of this cheese for my pizza balls. Plus it gave me an excuse to pick up two 'balls' of Twist Cheese (this is a knotted ball of Mozarella and Fenel that is fantastically stringy and tasty that we love to buy for snacks).

Ready to go into the oven

So now that I had my cheese it was time to make these things. Remember that bit about rushing it? Well, I hadn't really read the recipe in full and even the once over I gave it was a now a couple days in the past. I totally missed the fact that I needed three cans of biscuit mix. I also needed to pick up Garlic Powder as we didn't have any in the house. So I headed back out for some last minute groceries.

Okay now we are ready to cook!

Know what else is so great about this recipe? I can get the kids to help! My girls loved helping me flatten out the biscuit mix. They laughed at the Pillsbury can pop. They had a great time stacking slices of pepperoni and cheese, and they were better at wrapping everything up into balls than their dad was. I let the oldest help whisk the eggs and paint the little balls of dough and both of the kids helped me sprinkle on the Italian seasoning, garlic and Parmesan. Overall we had a great time putting everything together.

All baked up with sauce ready for dipping.

The girls and I cleaned up our mess while the whole thing baked for about 18 minutes. Was the house ever starting to smell good. I couldn't help but turn the oven light on, pop open the door and toss a quick pic up on Twitter.

Oh man, these things looked great when they came out of the oven. I kept checking on them panicking and expecting them to burn the second I turned away, but it didn't happen. They came out perfect. Nice and browned on the top with not even a hint of black to be seen.

My wife heated up a bowl full of our current favourite pasta sauce: Jamie Oliver Keep It Simple Tomato & Basil, and I put everything out on the table.

Wow was everything hot! Too hot. It took forever for these too cool off enough to eat. It was worth the wait though. Not only were these really easy to do, fun to make with the kids, looked great, and smelled great, they also tasted great. I got the official permission from my wife to cook these again, any time I wanted to.

Took some will to pause and take this pic

I think next time I'll play around with it a bit more. This time around all I did was grab my favourite local cheese instead of the marble suggested in the recipe. I think next time I'm going to play around with different pizza ingredients. Maybe some sausage for me and some mushrooms and olives for the girls. I'll also cook the meat a bit first. I think slightly crispy pepperoni would have made these even better.

So here was my experience trying to make one of those great easy looking recipes shared on social media. Turned out pretty damn awesome actually. Have you ever tried to cook something based on one of these viral pictures? How did it turn out?