I made that goddamn candy corn pizza

Now leave me alone

Good afternoon, assclowns!

You guys really loved Davida’s piece earlier this week. It’s the most read (and shared) post on my Substack account to date. Thank you guys for the love, and if you haven’t signed up, well, you can do it now:

We’re about to hit fall (fuuuuuck) and every year, without fail, someone tags me in a photo of this candy corn pizza abomination. This is because, as you all very well know, I make pizza. Practically half of my Substack posts to date have been about pizza.

I can’t escape my fate. Someday, I too, will become a pizza.

“Tee hee, Dannis, lookit! Was this you?!”

I wish I could take credit for this, but I did not, in fact, tear into a bushel of freshly shucked candy corn and put it on a shitty Digiorno’s frozen pizza. Digiorno’s is bullshit anyway. I’d rather drink a milkshake from a used diaper than eat Digiorno’s.

I finally had enough, and to get rid of all of you pestering me about this, I decided that I would not only make one candy corn pizza, but TWO candy corn pizzas. Whoa.

I, Dannis Ree, am a man of the people. I will die for your sins. Also mine too.

Neapolitan-style pizzas generally do not hold a ton of toppings since the dough tends to be pretty soft, even after it’s been cooked.

If you put too much shit on a pizza, it can get heavy, and disaster can strike at any moment. Like this mess that happened the other night.

This could easily be mistaken for a crime scene.

Not only am I regarded as the greatest food writer in all of history, I have also claimed the title of worst pizzamaker in all of history as well.

Look! It is the candy corn pizza in the oven.

Watching a pizza cook in the oven is very fun. It starts as a baby, and then it puffs up and gets big and turns into an adult pizza. After it becomes an adult, you then slaughter it with a pizza cutter and dump it down the hatch.

I revisited the meme while I was cooking this abomination and realized there weren’t nearly enough candy corns on my version, so mid-cook, I added what I would roughly estimate was an additional shitload of candy corn.

As you see, cooking is an exact science and nobody but me should be allowed in the kitchen, since I am a culinary genius.

Is this going to be another meme? Probably not.

I took a deep breath and had a slice. If I had to describe the flavor of this pizza, I’d say it tastes like a cry for social media attention. Also horseshit.

Sometimes sweet things work on pizza (we have a few pies finished with things like maple syrup and spicy honey). But the sheer sugar of candy corn makes the flavor of crushed tomatoes turn into a twisted form of ketchup. Mmm. Sweetened ketchup and fresh mozzarella pizza. Absolutely delightful. Fuck my life. Even a sugar-starved kid would kick this thing onto a busy highway.

At Paulie’s, we also serve these really great Detroit-style pizzas, which are lined with a cheese crust that caramelizes as it cooks.

This time I did not bother with the tomato sauce because I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

The candy corn completely melted and fused with the low-moisture mozzarella. Melted sugar made its way into the cheese crust, turning it into candy. It looked atrocious.

Why? Why was this delicious?

It is because the candy corn turned into caramel.

While caramel and cheese might not sound all that appealing, the fat and salt from the cheese turned what otherwise would have been a pure candy shell, into something sweet, a touch salty, and chewy.

What in the everloving fuck. I wasn’t the only one who liked it too. A coworker came up and had a bite, gave the slice a puzzled look and said, “This is really good!” I had a couple huge bites and felt really guilty that I’d actually made something worth eating for once. And it was a candy corn pizza, of all things. Next time I’ll put shrimp or Pepto-Bismol on it just to angrily spite my success.

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Please share, as usual, and you know. Hit the button. I have to buy more candy corn somehow.

Also, here’s an old picture of Cricket going to town on candy corn, her favorite food. She’s not allowed to have it anymore because it makes her sick.