🙂  Seriously, this was one of the more fun things I ever cooked.

A few weeks ago we walked into Barnes & Noble to pick out a few new books.  We usually march straight back to the kids section, but this time, Abigail stopped short.  She stopped and picked up a cookbook and started leafing through it! Be still my heart- I decided right there that whatever cookbook she wanted, I was buying it.  She flipped through one, and then another and then picked up one called “Favorite Brand Name 3 books in 1” and it had Party Treats, Kids’ Cake Mix, and Super Snacks combined in it.  Since we’ve brought this book home, I’ve looked for it at Amazon and Barnes & Noble online with no success, so I can’t even tell you where to get it, but I can share the recipe we tried out of it.  What I like about this book is there is a picture for every recipe, so Abigail gets an idea of what she would be making. Plus, it’s another spiral-bound hardcover book, I just love these!  Abigail asked if we could make something called “Snake Calzones” in the Super Snacks section, and although I had my concerns, I went ahead and bought most of the ingredients.

One of the ingredients called for was frozen bread dough that has been thawed.  I am a bread baker, so buying frozen dough just seemed silly to me, so that would be one place I substituted, I made up a fresh batch of my Sandwich Bread, and lopped off half for the snake, and as a bonus I baked up the other half into a loaf to accompany tonight’s dinner.  The snake was actually pretty easy to put together.  Once I had my dough, I rolled it out as directed to top it.  This particular recipe makes two snakes, and serves about 12 per snake. Since it’s just the kids and I, we made one snake, so I used about half of everything, with some minor changes.

The sun dried tomato pesto was my first change.  The pesto I had was really chunky, and there’s no way that 1 tablespoon was going to spread over all the dough.  I ended up using about 3 good sized tablespoons total- a finer pesto would spread better most likely.  My second change was to eliminate the Italian seasoning.  I thought there was plenty of seasoning in the pesto already, so I left the seasoning off and would do so again.  My last change was with the salami.  I was hoping this would be like pizza, so instead I used a good deli-quality pepperoni with the ham.   The whole process was a matter of layering, and then I rolled the whole thing up.  When rolling, you just have to be fearless, grab hold and squeeze and roll it all up.  The final step was to paint the dough.  Using egg yolks, water, and food coloring, I ended up painting my snake with a combination of red and yellow.  This is what it looked like just after painting:

The snake had to rest and rise for a little while, but then it baked up rather quickly- 30 minutes total.  I let it cool a little before cutting in, because I wanted to cheese to be part of the snake, and not ooze out immediately upon cutting.  Of course, during this time, Sir Hiss received his eyes and tongue.

He was delicious! Just a touch on the salty side for my tastes.  I imagine that it was the extra pesto that put it over the salt threshold for me.  But the kids inhaled it!  Zander even requested a second piece, which is completely unheard of.  I won’t be hesitating to make this again.  It was quick enough for me for everyday (provided I have dough on hand) but also special enough that this would be fantastic for a themed dinner party.  You could certainly leave off the snake painting and just make it as a slice-able calzone.  We ate it like a sandwich, picking it up and biting at it, but the whole time I thought a dipping marinara would have crowned it beautifully, and helped balance the salt for me.  I also think that kids could make this with a little help and supervision, Abigail just decided she was tired from adjusting to school, so I made the snake instead of her this time.

Snake Calzones