Tempting Triple Chocolate Caramel Dessert Pizza Recipe

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Last updated on April 2nd, 2024 at 03:55 pm

The idea for this chocolate dessert pizza comes by way of a local restaurant chain called Pizzeria Limone. They offer something similar to this recipe named the Divino pizza. It is delicious in its own right (and so are a lot of their other offerings – try it if you’re ever in the Salt Lake City, Utah valley area). It’s a great way to end a meal and treat yourself.

I hadn’t ever considered making it myself until we had a pizza night at our house one day. There was a small amount of extra dough and our group was discussing what pizza type to make. I was generally thinking of pepperoni or our cheesy garlic bread pizza. But my sister (who loves the Divino pizza) suggested a small dessert pizza.

So I took what I had in the pantry and made it work. And it turned out to be a sumptuous sweet treat to end the meal. I decided right then and there that I needed to go all in and make my own version of a delicious chocolate caramel dessert pizza.

And it doesn’t have to take a lot of effort either. This is a delicious, easy-to-make, and fun dessert that is sure to impress everyone who eats it.

What Is A Dessert Pizza?

Put simply, a dessert pizza is some kind of flat base with sweet toppings. Basically, a pizza but with sweet instead of savory toppings.

A lot of dessert pizzas use different bases instead of your typical pizza dough. I’ve seen cookie, graham cracker, and pie crust bases used for the crust in dessert pizzas. But regular dough or sweet roll dough are also common.

To fully fulfill the dessert part of a dessert pizza, you’ve got to fully load it with sweet toppings. These can include sliced fruits, chocolate, caramel, cookies, marshmallows, candy, peanut butter, Nutella, icing, cinnamon, and so much more.

Anything with a sweet flair could be a candidate for addition atop a dessert pizza. If you’re looking to create your own version of a dessert pizza, just let your inner child free.

How to Make A Sweet Pizza From Scratch

To make this pizza from scratch, we’ll go through the whole process from start to finish. Starting with making the dough to pre-baking then topping and finishing the chocolate dessert pizza. If you really want to speed things up, just buy some dough or a crust from the store and skip straight to prebaking and topping.

Just know that it won’t be quite the same experience as making dough from scratch.

As noted above, dessert pizzas can have many different things as their crusts. I decided to go with a kind of sweet roll dough that you might find with a cinnamon roll. This makes a rather sticky and at times kinda hard to work with dough. But trust me, it is worth it.

Begin by activating the yeast with the sugars and warm water. This will get the yeast all excited and ready to be the leavening agent in the dough.

Mix in milk, olive oil, and salt. Then add in the flour and mix it up. I used my KitchenAid stand mixer to whip together this batch of dough and used the dough hook attachment specifically to help mix and knead the dough. I just let the mixer run for a few minutes after everything had fully combined to knead the dough.

But this can all also be done by hand. After activating the yeast, just mix everything together until the flour is fully combined. Then pour it out onto a clean surface with a bit of flour and get to kneading by hand. Do so for 5 to 8 minutes.

Preparing the Dough

With the dough kneaded, we’re ready to give it a rise. Add the dough to a lightly greased bowl, loosely cover it with a clean towel, and let it sit in a warm spot for about an hour until it has doubled in size.

Note that if you are lacking a warm spot in your kitchen like I was this winter, turn your oven on for a few minutes and then turn it off. You don’t want it to be hot, but letting the oven preheat for a very short time should get it warm enough to help the dough rise.

After the dough has had a chance to rise, it is time to divide it and start shaping our pizzas.

Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C). Dump the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Use a bench scraper or knife to cut the dough into two roughly equal portions.

Shape the two different portions into round balls by folding the edges away from you and pinching them together to create a sort of surface tension on the outside. Keep doing this and lightly rolling them in the palms of your hands until a smooth ball of dough forms.

Now begin shaping the crust for our chocolate dessert pizza by flattening the dough balls. With room to spread out, press down on the center of the dough ball to begin flattening it into a round crust. Then work outwards, pressing and shaping until you get a nice, thin crust.

We’ll be cooking one pizza at a time unless you have two pans and a decent amount of oven space.

Move one of the pizza crusts to a round pizza pan (I absolutely LOVE these pizza pans from Le Creuset) or a baking sheet. Put the pan into the oven and pre-bake the crust for 4 minutes. Especially since we will be working with a lot of sugar in this dessert pizza, we need to pre-bake the crust so that the crust will be fully cooked through and the toppings won’t burn.

Sugar will burn quickly at high heat, so it is very important to partially cook the crust before topping it. After 4 minutes, take the crust out.

Chocolate Dessert Pizza Toppings

After making the dough and pre-baking it, we’re ready to top our pizza with sweet goodness.

Remember that the recipe calls for toppings for two pizzas, so be sure to split the amounts in half for each pizza. To be honest, though, the amounts are mere suggestions. Just top each pizza with as much as feels right for you.

Though do note that pizzas tend to need fewer toppings than it seems. At least for my greedy eyes. Similar to over-filling my burritos, I just want to add all of the toppings onto a pizza. But it can be too excessive. Remember that things will melt and spread as they cook.

Start by placing down the white chocolate chunks, dark chocolate chunks, and mini marshmallows. Just try to get an even spread around the top of the pizza so that every bite is full of chocolatey sweet goodness.

Now, drizzle on the chocolate sauce and the caramel sauce. I usually have my sauces in plastic squeeze bottles for easy drizzling whenever I need it. But you could just as easily use a spoon to pick up some sauce and drizzle it out. Just be a bit careful with the spoon to not drop a ton of sauce in a single spot.

The only ingredient that won’t go on before baking is powdered sugar. This is just for sprinkling on top at the end and is mostly for a fancy look and isn’t really needed. It just gives it that nice extra flair. I put a little powdered sugar into a small mesh strainer and tap it while holding it over the chocolate pizza.

Where to Find Ingredients

Because this recipe is so focused on the toppings (especially the chocolate), I think it is very important to source some quality ingredients.

For the chocolate and caramel sauces, I suggest making your own. I recently made a post on how to make chocolate syrup in preparation for making this chocolate dessert pizza recipe. It is fast and easy. And a while ago I posted my salted caramel sauce recipe that I think works well here.

You could also buy store-bought dessert sauces.

For the chocolate chunks, I admittedly used some very fancy stuff. I used the same Callebaut Belgian white chocolate chunks from my white chocolate chunk cookies. I had leftovers so it seemed like a good use. The Valhrona dark chocolate I used is currently not available but I have also used this fancy Callebaut chocolate before.

You don’t need to use as fancy a chocolate. You could also use some decent-quality white and dark chocolate bars from the grocery store and just chop them up. Just keep in mind that chocolate is the central flavor of this recipe when buying ingredients.

Now that you’ve got all of the necessary ingredients, you can start preparing your dessert pizzas.

How to Cook Chocolate Dessert Pizza

Now comes the final bake of the pizza.

With the toppings perfectly spread out, put the pizza back into the oven at the same temperature. Bake it for 5 to 7 minutes until the dough has cooked through.

The mini marshmallows will puff up and brown, and the chocolate will begin to melt down (though they will roughly contain their shape and not fully puddle down). The edge of the crust should just start to become golden brown.

If anything starts to burn and/or smoke, then remove it from the oven immediately! Sugar is in high danger of getting too hot and burning. When it is finished baking, remove it from the oven and let it cool a little before slicing and serving. Repeat the process with the second pizza.

Remember the sugar will be very hot right out of the oven. Trust me, I’ve been burned.

For an especially delightful presentation, drizzle a bit of chocolate and caramel sauce onto a plate before serving a slice on it.

How did yours turn out?

I’d love to hear when you try out this triple chocolate caramel dessert pizza! Take a pic of your food and share your success with me by adding it to your Instagram stories or feed, and tagging me @doyouroux, or by using #doyouroux.

Plus, leave a rating to let me know how you liked the recipe. It helps me out a lot to know how things worked out… or didn’t.

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