Not too long ago I had a dinner party with a relatively unfussy main course – lamb shanks on a bed of green lentils, so I went above and beyond on dessert; not something I usually spend much time thinking about. My exact thought process is gone, but the results are still being talked about!

The base was a standard cookie crumb mix, except that I used Carr’s Ginger Lemon Cremes. I topped that with cylinders of mango ice cream (home-made, of course), and topped that with a classic chocolate shell topping. I plated it with two sauces – a sea-salt dulce de leche and a raspberry puree. Sprinkled with some chopped crystallized ginger and chopped pistachios. What a riot of flavours! And it looked pretty good too.

A few days ago I received my new cooking toy, a uuni 3 pizza oven. It uses wood pellets as the fuel and gets seriously hot. And being me I leapt right in, invited some friends and served up a five-course pizza dinner. To mimimise the variables I used their recommended dough; normally I would use the Serious Eats New York-style dough which has always given me good results in my domestic oven. I did use the Serious Eats sauce on one pizza (the only one that used sauce).

First course was roasted garlic and fresh rosemary. I didn’t realise how fast these things cook, so there was a bit of burnt round the edges, but good otherwise. Second course, and the most successful by popular acclaim, was caramelised onion, walnuts, gorgonzola and dried cherries soaked in Dubonnet (it was the first thing that came to hand ;). Tres yum!!

Third was a seafood course. Some sautéed bay scallops and pieces of prawn, over fresh mozzarella, topped with some capers, and then dressed with Meyer lemon-infused olive oil and chopped chives and parsley. It was good, but it needed another dimension to make it great. One to work on.

Next a simple classic with red pizza sauce, mozzarella and pancetta.

By this time an hour had gone by and it seems that the grate had got full (great customer support from uuni revealed this), and I got a flame out. Not knowing what was the situation I added more pellets and tried to cook the last pizza without the oven being fully hot. This was dessert – ricotta and honey, topped with blackberries and chopped hazelnuts. It ended up being a bit smokey in flavour and the audience clamoured for chocolate (they had all been at a recent dinner party where I created a dessert masterpiece), so I’ll need to think more about that. I’ve never made or even eaten a dessert pizza; so another thing to work on.

I was so involved in the process I completely forgot to take pictures.

A few days later I made a batch of the Serious Eats dough and used that in the uuni; for some reason it got far more puffy than usual during the cold fermentation stage; no idea why, and the final results weren’t great. I see lots of pizzas in my future while I figure out what works.