Easy Mini Pizza Muffins Perfect After School Snack

Classic pizza has seen many variations over the years. But this mini pizza muffin recipe isn’t reinventing the wheel. It’s a way to make meal-prep and freezable after-school snacks or school lunch treats easier. As a mom, I know how hard it can be to come up with new ideas all the time. This simple recipe is made with store-bought pizza dough and a few simple ingredients to make budget-friendly mini pizzas the kids will love, even the picky eaters. It’s a simple, mom-friendly mini pizza that makes the perfect lunch. You can even get the kids involved in helping make these tasty little pizza muffins.

With this recipe, you can customize it to your family’s preferred pizza toppings. You can even switch out regular pizza dough for biscuit dough, which is also freezable after baking. It’s a fun, easy dinner, too, if you pair it with a side salad for a complete meal. You can never have too many great ways to enjoy pizza, can you?

Are you a pizza lover looking for more non-traditional pizzas? Try our easy tortilla pizza bake!

Why You Will Love This Recipe

Meal-Prep and Freezer Friendly. This recipe is great for those who like to meal-prep. It’s not overly difficult and can be done in less than an hour. 

It’s cost-effective. With a few ingredients, you can make delicious, budget-friendly snacks. This particular recipe uses only four ingredients!

​Well, Pizza. Who doesn’t love gooey cheese and pepperoni with all the carbs of freshly baked bread? The pizza crust bakes up fluffy and is the best fresh from the oven. 

Let’s Get Started Making These Mini Pizza Muffins

First, I am not going to lie—this can get messy, so have something to clean your hands as you work. Next, you will want to purchase the ingredients. If you cannot find premade pizza dough, making biscuit dough will also suffice. It’s relatively simple and straightforward to make a batch of biscuit dough, and it will still bake up plenty flaky. You will also want to preheat the oven to a hot 425F.

The trick to making these is working with fresh pizza dough ball and getting it to cooperate. It’s relatively elastic. I generally work it with my hands in the air to stretch it as much as possible. This is especially important when just taking the dough out of the fridge. Once it has become pliable, you will want to lightly dust a clean work surface to roll the dough. Unlike a traditional pizza, this recipe requires that you roll the dough into a long rectangle. Make it approximately six inches wide to get the correct width for cutting. 

Next, apply the pizza sauce directly to the dough, using the back of a spoon or brush to spread it end to end. It’s okay if it slides off the sides a bit. 

If you’ve ever made a regular pizza before, it’s pretty clear that what comes next is the pepperoni. However, because we purchased regular pepperoni slices, you will want to cut those into smaller pieces. Remember, these are mini muffins, not a full-sized pizza, so diced pepperoni is going to fit better. Sprinkle the diced pepperoni across the whole length of the pizza.

Next is my favorite, the cheese. You can add as much or as little as you like, but I encourage you not to overdo it because it’s going to make a bigger mess when cutting and rolling. Whether you choose to use pre-shredded mozzarella cheese or grate your own is really up to your personal preference. In fact, I chose to use a mozza-cheddar blend as I like the robust flavor of cheddar in the mini pizza bun. 

Once the cheese has been added across the surface of the dough, it’s time to prepare the muffin tins. As you can guess, melty cheese is greasy, so you don’t have to worry about greasing the muffin cups. However, you may wish to use mini muffin liners to line the pan if you don’t want a messy clean-up afterward. It’s really up to you. I didn’t use paper liners, and the mini pizza muffins popped out of the cups easily enough.

Cut through the dough across the width in one-inch sections. Then, cut the one-by-six-inch sections in half. Carefully roll the three-inch pizza pieces up. Remember that fresh dough that gave us grief earlier? Well, now it’s our friend because it will stretch to wrap around the ingredients nicely. Yes, this is a messy process. But it will be well worth it, I promise. 

Once the mini muffin pan is full of mini pepperoni pizzas, you can pop them in the oven to bake them. These bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven and have a beautiful golden brown color on top when done. Fresh from the oven, they are quite hot and should be allowed to sit in the pan to cool. When they are no longer hot to the touch, you can easily pop the mini pepperoni pizza muffins right out and enjoy them as a tasty snack or use them as a school lunch filler. 

Ingredients​:

Store-Bought Pizza Dough: This is often found near the deli counter in the grocery store. It’s an easy and convenient way to make pizza at home and usually only costs a couple of bucks.

Pizza Sauce: I used Primo pizza sauce for this recipe. It’s a lighter-flavored sauce with a nice thickness.

Pepperoni: Pizza pepperoni comes in many varieties, each with its own flavor. Choose the one that your family likes the most.

Mozza-Cheddar Cheese: I used the Armstrong cheese blend for this. It has a good meltability and isn’t overly expense.

Substitutions And Add-Ins For These Savory Muffins

Store-Bought Pizza Dough: If you can’t find premade pizza dough, no worries! You can easily substitute it with biscuit dough. It’s simple to make and still gives you that flaky, delicious texture. Just prepare a batch of biscuit dough and roll it out like the pizza dough. If you still would like to make these but want to make a larger batch for meal prep, I recommend making homemade pizza dough as it would be most budget-friendly. 

Pizza Sauce: No pizza sauce? No problem. You can make a plain pasta sauce zippier by adding a few pinches of dried herbs. Use oregano, basil, parsley, marjoram, or an Italian seasoning blend.

Pepperoni: For this recipe, you can purchase pre-sliced pizza pepperoni or use a pepperoni stick cut into smaller pieces. Pizza pepperoni is just a bit drier than the pepperoni sticks. You can omit the pepperoni and enjoy cheese pizza muffins instead. 

Mozza-Cheddar Cheese: For these mini pizza muffins, you can use a good melting cheese. Getting fanciful with cheeses can elevate these from a kids’ after-school snack to a game-day-worthy appetizer. Cheeses like Provolone, Fontina, Monterey Jack, Gouda, and Gruyere are all good meltable cheeses.

Other delicious pizza toppings you can use are black or green olives (diced), onion, crumbled sausage, ground beef, anchovies, bell pepper, and hot pepper. The list can be endless. Suffice it to say you can use any of your family’s favorite toppings. Older kids will love these customizable pizza muffins as part of their weekend gaming lineup. 

Remember, you can also customize these further with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese on top before baking or a little dash of fresh herbs or red pepper flakes to give them a more robust flavor. 

Expert Tips, Serving And Storing Suggestions For These Mini Pizza Muffins

Tip #1: Working The Dough: If your dough is giving you a hard time fresh out of the fridge, don’t panic! Let it warm up a bit and stretch it in the air—this trick makes the dough much easier to work with and helps it cooperate when rolling.

Tip #2: Pan Preparation: The cheesy goodness creates its own grease, so you don’t need liners for a clean and easy release from the muffin tin. But lining the muffin cups is a solid option if you’re looking to avoid any mess.

Tip #3: Cutting The Pizza To Roll: When cutting the dough, keep the sections small. This makes the mini muffins easier to roll and ensures that your little pepperoni-filled bites bake up nice and golden without spilling everywhere.

Enjoy this easy snack as part of your school lunch ideas or after-school snacking. The whole family will enjoy these with their favorite pizza toppings as a quick snack at any time. The easy recipe is made in under an hour and can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge. 

These little pizza buns are also great frozen, so feel free to make a larger batch and freeze for easier school lunch prep. Simply let cool completely, then freeze in freezer bags for up to three months. To eat later, remove from the freezer bag the portion you would like to enjoy. Let thaw in the fridge overnight. Serve cold or hot by heating in the microwave. 

If you have tried this easy how-to recipe, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please rate and leave a comment below so others know if you liked it.