Cooking: Yummy Mushroom Personal Pizzas

This is a spin on an Atkin's recipe I found when I was in the hospital earlier in October 2013.  It was fairly simple: use a portobello mushroom cap as the "pizza crust" and top with whatever toppings you desired.

Well, here's my version.

What you need:
1 Portobello mushroom cap, stem removed
1 small jar of pizza sauce
1 Tbsp. onion, coarsely chopped
1 Tbsp. green bell pepper, diced
Turkey pepperoni
Mozarella cheese, shredded
1 Tbsp. garlic, minced
Olive oil
Season to taste: black pepper, rosemary, thyme leaves, Italian seasoning, oregano, basil, sucralose (optional)

First, take a damp cloth/paper towel to clean off the mushroom caps.  Remove the stems, but save them to throw back into your sauce.

Brush the mushroom caps down with olive oil.  Place on a cookie sheet or in a skillet that can handle high heat.

Cook mushroom caps at 425 degrees Fahrenheit until the caps feel tender when poked with a fork.

Meanwhile, work on the sauce.  Empty the jar of sauce, add the garlic and seasonings.  *You can omit the sucralose or use some other kind of sweetener.  It all depends on whether you want to cut the acidity of the sauce or not.  I prefer the acidity cut, so I use sweetener.  Chop up the mushroom stems and place that into the sauce too.

Get your other toppings ready.

When the caps are tender, remove them from the oven, top with sauce (as thick as you like), add cheese, add toppings, and if you like more cheese, add more to the top of the other toppings.

Broil the pizza until the cheese on top is nice and toasty.

It amazed me just how utterly delicious these were.  I made two, and that was enough for me.  But given that the directions are for just one mushroom cap, you can adjust it to serve more people.

You don't have to use the toppings I used.  Anything that pairs well with mushrooms can be used.  Just remember you're dealing with a small area, so throwing a T-bone steak on that mushroom cap probably won't work.