Pumpkin Apple Dessert Pizza

We love fall.  It is the best season of all the seasons here in Iowa- dry, sunny days, cool nights, leaves turning, harvesting the crops, apple picking time, etc.

Fall is also a wonderful time to camp- bugs are gone (mostly), its no longer humid, days are sunny, and nights are cool.

So, before this trip, I decided we needed to make a "fall" dessert.  Only, I knew I didn't want to make apple crisp, apple turnovers, or pumpkin cobbler (all things we've already done in the D.O.).  Well, ultimately, we decided to make this dessert pizza based on a recipe from Very Best Baking.  You will have some canned pumpkin leftover.  Just save it to use for pumpkin pancakes the next morning.

Pumpkin Apple Dessert Pizza
12" Dutch Oven (we have the lipped lid that so it can be used upside down)

1 16.5-ounce package sugar cookie dough
1 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup finely chopped apple (peeled and cored)
Extra cinnamon (optional)
Chopped walnuts (optional)
Carmel ice cream sauce

Lightly grease the lid of the dutch oven (if you can't flip yours upside down, line the bottom of your D.O. with foil instead to make it super easy to lift the pizza out).   Pat the dough out into a10-11" circle (doesn't have to go all the way to the edges). 

Bake with coals on top and bottom for about 20-25 minutes. Sorry that we can't tell you exactly how many we used because we just "went for it".  Meaning, we didn't exactly heat up coals for the crust.  We put the upside down D.O. on top of the 14" which had our supper in it.  Then we cooked it- with only bottom heat for like 15 minutes.  Then, we took it off the heat for a bit to deal with supper.  Then we put just a little bit of heat underneath and half used coals from our supper things on top (filling the available space with coals) for another 10 minutes.  So, what we are saying, we cooked it, rotated it, and checked it until it looked close to done (not all the way done, but not too jiggly in the middle).

Combine pumpkin, cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of the sugar and the 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.  Spread over the cookie crust.  Sprinkle chopped apples on top.  Sprinkle nuts on top (we didn't have these so we left them out).  Bake 10-15 minutes with lots of coals on top and just a few (8 for the 12") on bottom.  When the pizza is done, drizzel the carmel sauce on top, return lid for a couple minutes, and serve warm.

~Erin