Gluten-Free Pizza and Vitamix S-Series Personal Blender Giveaway {Closed}

Gluten-Free Pizza and Vitamix Giveaway

I’m not going to be with my Mom this Mother’s Day. We are very close and though a specific date on the calendar doesn’t make it any more important for us to spend time together, I’d still love to see her this weekend. I have so much admiration and respect for my mom. As I’ve told you before, my parents immigrated to America before I was born and I watched them work very hard their whole lives.

My mom became a teacher when I started Kindergarten. I remember feeling resentful when she began working. I specifically recall feeling rejected and telling her she changed. It’s so interesting how a young mind processes things. Now, as an adult, I respect how difficult it was for her to go to work every day, attend school at night, grade student papers/tests and then study for her own academic work. She taught AP French and ended up earning masters degrees in and teaching Spanish, Latin and ESL in addition to French. What a rock star!

My mom was still able to get dinner on the table every night. Based on her busy schedule, meals were not an event at our house. We ate lots of chicken cutlets, rice-a-roni and some frozen dinners in-between. We were happy. Looking back, it’s a wonder she was able to pull it all off! About once a month, my mom plucked an old Italian cookbook off of the shelf and she, my sister and I would make a homemade pizza recipe inside. We made the dough and sauce, grated the cheese together and assembled and baked the pie on a sheet tray. It’s one of my favorite memories.

Gluten-Free Focaccia Pizza

Vitamix recently asked me to share a heritage recipe and host a giveaway for their S-Series blender on my site. Specifically, they asked me to talk about a recipe passed down through generations that moms could make with their children. The first thing that came to mind was pizza. Even though my mom, 2 of my sons and I now all have celiac disease, I knew I had to create some version of the same to share with you for Mother’s Day.

In addition to a great recipe, you are also getting a chance to win a personal blender from one of my very favorite brands, Vitamix! When I was in culinary school, one of the chefs said he was asked to be the spokesperson for a different blender company, who shall remain nameless. When he refused, they asked why and he said “because I could put your machine in my Vitamix and it would pulverize it.” Enough said. Vitamix machines are commercial quality. They have no equal on the market and whether you are blending lobster shells for seafood stock (which no other machine can do) or blending a healthy juice or soup (which no other machine will do so well), Vitamix blenders are the best.

Vitamix S55-Main-40oz-20oz

Good luck! I hope you win one! Click on this link to enter through 5/12 at midnight: a Rafflecopter giveaway. {This giveaway is now closed}

Back to the pizza. I used the focaccia dough recipe here for the crust. Instead of baking it all the way through, I went about 15 minutes before adding the homemade sauce in the recipe below. I made half plain and topped the other half with spicy sausage. Feel free to use any crust you like, homemade, store bought, gluten-free or not. Just be sure to let your kids participate and at the very least, spread the sauce and cheese on top. Happy Mother’s Day!

4.8 from 13 reviews
Gluten-Free Pizza and Vitamix S-Series Personal Blender Giveaway
Author: 
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 6
 
Ingredients
  • 1 recipe gluten-free focaccia or other pizza dough (enough to fill a ½ sheet tray)
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • ½ large onion, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, smashed
  • kosher salt and black pepper
  • 28 oz can San Marzano tomatoes
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • pinch red pepper flakes
  • 8-10 large basil leaves, plus more for topping
  • 1 sprig oregano
  • 1 lb fresh mozzarella
  • Any additional topping of choice (i.e. cooked sausage, pepperoni, vegetables)
Instructions
  1. Heat butter in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion, season with salt and pepper and toss frequently, until softened and beginning to brown at edges, about 5-7 minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Crush tomatoes with your hands into the pan an add juice from the can along with remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmering, until thickened and deep red in color, about 45 minutes. Cool and then add to Vitamix S-series or other blender. Process at high speed until smooth. Season to taste with additional salt and pepper, if needed.
  2. Heat oven to 375 and bake dough in a sheet pan until almost cooked through, about 15 minutes. Top with sauce, cheese, additional torn basil leaves and any other toppings and bake 10-15 minutes more, until dough is cooked through and cheese is melted. Set oven to broil and cook an additional 2-3 minutes until cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown. Remove from oven, cool 5 minutes. slice and serve.

This post was sponsored by Vitamix. All opinions are my own.

87 Comments

  • My mom used to make hundreds of yeast doughnuts when I was growing up. My friends loved coming over on doughnut days! She would freeze them and we would thaw them as an after school snack. I would love to find an amazing gluten free deep fried yeast doughnut, but it’s probably better that I don’t…

    All your recipes are amazing.

    • Thank you, Therese! I think we better stay away from creating a fried doughnut recipe too! 🙂

  • I can totally relate to having immigrant parents who worked hard to provide for the family. My parents, mom especially, worked around the clock to make sure that my sister, brother and myself were provided for. While we never wanted for anything, the trade off was that we were latchkey kids for a good portion of our preteen lives.

    Through all the work though, I remember my mom getting dinner on the table. How she managed to do this, while working as a nurse and helping my dad with his business is mind boggling to me. She was never a baker (older generation Korean’s don’t bake like North Americans) so the kitchen memories I have are ones where I helped her make banchan, side dishes eaten with rice, and other Korean dishes. She always let me taste test everything and I usually got chased out of the kitchen when I’d asked for sixth and sevenths though.

    Great recipes and stories. Love your blog!

  • When I was growing up there were always chocolate chip cookies being baked in our kitchen. The item that I am trying to make as my legacy is homemade pizza. I’ve been doing it for more than half my life, started working at a local joint when I was 16. My two young boys are starting to learn just as of the beginning of the year. Making pizza is totally fun and very rewarding…You get to eat your creations! I am always looking for new and inventive pizza combinations, haven’t done a pepperoni pizza for myself in years. One of my recent adventures was the La Montanara, the crust is fried, topped and then baked…It is most excellent!

  • My favorite family heritage cooking memory is of my childhood spent alongside my grandmother…she taught me how to cook and bake at a very young age…I cherish those memories <3

  • My family and I love my aunt’s Honduran cinnamon rolls! I even spent a couple days at her house when I was younger just so she could teach me how to make those yummy cin rolls. ^_^

  • My mom cooks the BEST mexican food. Every meal cooked with her is amazing! Thank you for the giveaway!

  • My mom, my sister, my mom’s best friend, and I used to get together about 4x’s per year and make a ton of lasagnas from scratch! We’d freeze them and have them to eat for months at a time.

  • my memory is of my grandmaw cooking all the time and teaching me how to can and little things like that and grow a garden small but yet still one

  • My daughters and I use to make ice water cake then decorate it with my grandmother who has since passed on. This was a tradition for every birthday.

  • Making homemade pizza with my mom. She taught me how to cook and bake at an early age.

  • My mom was a working mom and was off on weekends and we used to make homemade biscuits together on Saturday mornings and I really loved that!

  • My favorite part about this giveaway is hearing all of your stories! Everything sounds delicious. Thank you for sharing!

  • I remember I use to cook all the time with my grandparents, I loved waking up and cooking breakfast fresh toast and jams and fresh fruits and squeezed orange juice.

  • I loved cooking lemon merangue (spelling?!) pie with my grandmother when I was growing up….soooo delicious!

  • Learning from my mom on how to bake cakes and cupcakes is one of my favorite kitchen memories.

  • My favorite cooking/food memory is, when my great grandma taught me how to cook. There were so many new and amazing things I learned in her giant 1950’s pink kitchen. Fried yellow summer squash was one of my favorites, and how no one left the table without having to adjust buttons and belts. 🙂

  • My favorite cooking memory from childhood is cooking all day with my mom before a big feast (Thanksgiving, Lent, Christmas, etc.)

    My mom is a beast in the kitchen…it always smelled SO GOOD.

  • I remember canning peaches with my grandma when I was young and that is such a special memory for me!

  • My mom and her sisters would get together to make tamales. I would help them. It was so much fun.

  • I love my grandmother’s meatball recipe. I remember having so much fun rolling the balls with my mother as a child.

  • Goodness gracious great balls of fire, luv mom’s chocolate chips cookies. Wow, prize blender is fab. & splendid. 2 fingers snap. It is tight, fly & off the chain. Thank you for the awesomeness, the contest, and generosity. 🙂 Pick me, pick me!

  • I remember my mom and family getting together and spending a whole day making a ton of home-made perogies. So yummy!

  • One of my favorite recipes passed from my Mom to me is her “Hermit Bar” recipe. They are something like oatmeal cookies, but denser, with nuts and dried fruit. There is so much stuff in these bars, they could be the mainstay of a hermit’s diet!

  • It’s always great cooking with family and having fun experiences. One of the most fun experience that I had was with my little cousins. We were making a German Chocolate Cake from scratch. There were so many steps and things to do, but we laughed so much! Although we dropped one of the two layers on the floor–tragic!!–we will never forget the fun that we had :o)

  • My mom made an AMAZING Alcatra. It’s an very traditional Portuguse dish; oven braised beef – cooked over HOURS. It had wine, beer, garlic, bay leafs, onions, and would braise for hours. She’d serve it with mashed potatoes, + a simple lettuce, tomato cucumber salad.

  • I love making homemade dumplings with my mom during Chinese New Year – it’s always been a household tradition that I’ve loved.

  • I loved making pierogies with my grandma! We made pierogies with farmers’ cheese, sauerkraut, potatoes with cheese, and dessert pierogies with tart cherries!

  • My favorite is learning how to cook italian dishes.. My mom would teach me the ropes..hoping to pass it down to my daughter

  • Oh yes pizza! We would make pizza when I was at home. So much fun eating something you created from scratch.

  • My mom always made split pea soup….so much so that I refuse to eat it to this day 😉 My dad taught us how to make Frosty’s. Now those are good!

  • My favorite memory is my grandmother teaching me how to make her homemade cinnamon bread! It took all day and we went through it step by step. And we wrote out the recipe card together. I am so glad that I have that recipe and that memory of making the bread with her.

  • I remember always cooking spaghetti with my aunts and grandmother..a pinch here and a pinch there of seasonings..her teaching us

  • my best memories were making lasagna with my mom. She would always let me layer on the cheese and sauce.

  • I remember my mom spending a whole day making tons of cabbage rolls. For us, for our family and to put some away in the freezer.

  • my favorite would have to be my mom’s pound cake, she makes it for my birthday every year!

  • My Favorite Memory Is When Grandma Would Cook Her Fried Apples, I Can Still Smell The Aroma!

  • What a sweet memory of your mom.
    Growing up it was just my mom and I and we loved experimenting in the kitchen together. She gave me a love of cooking and I thank her for that. My favorite recipe from her is German Dumplings with Goulash, it always made me feel like “home” so whenever I went away and came back or if I go to visit her….she’s in Australia now….she makes my favorite and I feel like I never left.

  • One of my earliest cooking memories is making potato salad with my mom. She always let me cut the onions because they didn’t make me cry. (oh, I wish that was still the case!)

  • I loved making grandma’s homemade lemon bars with her. I would peek in the over and watch them back and couldn’t wait long enough until they cooled!

  • I love baking German style buttercream cake where the buttercream is made with vanilla pudding and creamy butter.

  • My favorite heritage recipe is my late grandmothers cardamom bread recipe she always made while I was growing up and my mom now makes with my own daughter!

  • My favorite memory was baking, “grandma’s” layer cake with my Mom. It was a vanilla moist 4 layer cake with chocolate fudge frosting. I learned all about baking and creating delicious treats from my mother’s recipe file box.

  • Thanks to everyone for sharing your favorite stories of cooking with your families and congratulations to Heather for winning the Vitamix S-55 Personal Blender. This giveaway is now closed.

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