This recipe for a Chilled Vegetable Pizza appetizer was for a weekday wine potluck in August. It was inspired by a photo/recipe on Pinterest from Mom on Timeout for Veggie Crescent Bites, though a guest mentioned that it also looks like a Pampered Chef Cool Veggie Pizza creation, and there is a similar recipe on the Pillsbury site for Easy Crescent Veggie Pizza!

Wherever this Chilled Vegetable Pizza recipe came from, I love the bright colors of the vegetables. And, I love dill, so making this with the dilly cream cheese spread was right up my alley, though I suppose you could up the vegetables by using a vegetable cream cheese, or ranch it up (as in this version at AllRecipes)!

You can probably use any base you would like for your “flatbread” bottom of the vegetable pizza, including actual pizza dough, but I followed her lead in pinching together reduced-fat Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. This made two pizzas, and using a pizza cutter I was able to cut about twenty four 3-bite sized square slices from each pizza, so overall this yielded 48 little appetizer bites of Chilled Vegetable Pizza from this entire recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans of reduced-fat Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, or use pizza dough- including wheat, or a gluten free, your call!
• 1 package (8 oz reduced-fat cream cheese or neufchatel cheese or tofutti “cream cheese”, softened)
• 1 cup light sour cream or Tofutti Sour Supreme sour cream substittute
• 1 tablespoon of chopped dill
• 1 tablespoon of chopped chives
• 4 cups of chopped vegetables. Pick a rainbow of colors: I chose broccoli, asparagus, baby carrots, red and orange bell peppers, and corn kernels

Directions:

1. Combine the sour cream, softened cream cheese, dill, and chives together. You can mix this up the day before to reduce your prep work.
   
   
2. Same thing with cutting all the vegetables into small pieces. That way, when it came for my get together that evening, I came home from work and just had to really assemble everything, and it took me less than 20 minutes! You can choose how you want your vegetables. For instance, for me the broccoli and bell peppers were raw. But, I steamed the asparagus, cut baby carrots, and corn.
   
3. When you are ready to make the chilled vegetable pizza, take out the dill/chive cream cheese mixture to let soften again for spreading. Next, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
4. Open the packages of crescent rolls. Unroll each can (8 triangular pieces of crescent roll) so they become one long rectangular sheet, or you can settle for two square sheets. Make sure that you pinch any of the pre-cut seams between the pieces so that everything will stay together. Put each one on a lined baking sheet.
5. Bake for 10 minutes, and then remove the two baking sheets from the oven and let cool.  Remove and let cool for a few minutes so you won’t hurt yourself during the next step, which is spreading the dill/chive cream cheese mixture onto the crescent roll sheet.
   
6. Top with fresh veggies. Use a pizza cutter or knife to cut down to appetizer size pieces and serve! I did not refrigerate mine, since I barely finished before my co-host arrived, but you can chill it in the fridge if you’d like.
   

I suppose I could have fancied it up by grilling flatbread to give it a bit of smoky flavor, and ooo done that with the corn too. But I didn’t. And it was still great, and continues my theme of super easy recipes this summer.

Oooo… or you could make this a dessert version using fruit and crème fraîche or marscarpone… the possibilities!