Trying to make a Froot Loop pizza was a terrible idea
Would a Fiber One pizza be better?
What’s up, clowns?!
I am still alive. When I say that “I am still alive,” I mean, no attempts were made on my life when I made my version of pasta carbonara last week using ketchup, though I have been looking over my shoulder a bunch. The coast has been clear, but who knows, our cat Nugget may have been hired to assassinate me. Sometimes he wakes me up by stepping on my head while I’m sleeping. I have my suspicions.
I know social media has its pitfalls, but sometimes it sure does come in handy, because whenever someone does something really weird with food, you’re all the first to tell me. Thank you for that, because this week, I’ve been made aware of a stunt pizza from a place called Fong’s Pizza in Des Moines, Iowa, by many people.
This is a new breakfast pizza that Fong’s has put on the menu, called the Loopy Fruits.
It is a pie topped with one of the worst cereals of all, Froot Loops. I can hear some of you getting mad at me for talking shit about Froot Loops, but let’s be serious. Froot Loops suck ass. I ate them frequently as a child and I was too dumb to know that there was better cereal out there, like driveway gravel. I still, to this day, do not understand the flavor of Froot Loops. It’s probably urinal cake. I know this because I have a wild reputation for being a urinal cake connoisseur.
Now, the thing is, I have gotten a lot of mixed information on the internet about what is actually on this pizza. The Des Moines Register says it’s just Froot Loops and cheese, and based off their photo, that’s pretty much what it looks like.
A local news channel, KCCI, however, reports that this pizza has a sour cream and cream cheese base, mozzarella, Froot Loops, and is finished with a condensed milk and Greek yogurt drizzle. There is video evidence to back this up. This seems like the more likely version. Fong’s is famous for a crab rangoon pizza, which has a reputation for being pretty good. I know a few people who’ve tried it, and they said that despite the fact that it looks like a gimmick, the end result is pretty delicious. I mean, it sounds good to me, who doesn’t like crab rangoons?
I did discover some other interesting gems on the menu, like a “Fongolian beef” pizza, and a whole section called “Happy Endings,” (hardy har, dickholes, clap yourselves on the back for that one) so take what you will from this entire place.
“Dannis Ree,” I said to myself, “As the greatest food writer in history, you must recreate this pizza at home and talk a lot of shit about this place, mostly because you just discovered this ‘Happy Endings’ part of the menu while sitting here at your laptop, as you’re writing this.”
Based off of what I saw online, I decided to go with a pizza crust with cream cheese frosting, mozzarella, Froot Loops, and condensed milk to drizzle on afterwards.
Here is a close-up of the gang, who do not get as much credit as they deserve for working very hard on Food is Stupid by just staring at me while I mess around in the kitchen.
Harvey, Mr. Bee, and Pepper, the entire food world salutes you. You have won the James Beard Award category for best stuffed animal mascots ever.
I’d also like to give a shoutout to my ancient frozen pizza pan, which I think I’ve had since college.
I should probably get a new one, but we’ve been through a lot together and seen some real shit. There’s nothing healthier than noticing the occasional rust spot showing up on your pans after you’ve eaten dinner off of them.
It did not make sense to put a whole lot of effort into this thing, because creatively, all they did was put frosting, cereal, and cheese on a pizza, so I too, would do as little work as possible.
I decided to go with a pre-made pizza crust, which is our local grocery store chain’s knockoff of Boboli. If this crust looks terrible to you, that’s because it is. It’s dry and crumbly and it nearly disintegrated while I pulled it out of the wrapper.
I also used Pillsbury canned cream cheese-flavored frosting, which has a dirty secret.
There’s no actual cream cheese in it. There is, in fact, no dairy in it at all. It doesn’t taste like cream cheese, it tastes like artificially-flavored lies!
I topped the pizza crust with the last ingredients, which was plenty of mozzarella and Froot Loops cereal.
This thing resembled more of a children’s toy than it did food. All those little brightly colored circles, resting atop of a pale crumbly pizza crust simulator and fake cream cheese frosting, made me wonder if an actual child came up with this idea. The only thing that would make it better would be the addition of crayons.
I baked it off until the cheese melted and I could see it bubbling up.
Somehow, this pizza looked worse after I baked it. As you can see, some of the little Froot Loops had scorched and turned an appealing black color, which is exactly what I thought was going to happen. There’s nothing more coveted in the world on a pizza than burnt urinal cake-flavored cereal.
It is very hard to tell based off this photo, but I did, in fact, drizzle sweetened condensed milk on top.
Everything other than the cereal itself was a nearly matching pale-ass off-white, a highly coveted color when it comes to pizza. You want your pizza to look like a ghost unwillingly bound to walk the land for all of eternity. Trust me. You’re reading a newsletter called Food is Stupid, there’s no way I could be wrong.
I took my first bite of it, and I did not know what to think. The cream cheese-flavored frosting had broken during the baking process, meaning all the oil was separated and floating on top. Mixed with the fat from the cheese, it had a very strange effect, coating my mouth with something that I’d describe as the consistency of sweet wax. The cereal itself stayed miraculously crunchy, with a slightly stale texture, and I didn’t notice any discernible burnt flavors.
Then, to my surprise, I noticed a strange flavor I was not expecting. Garlic. I looked at the ingredients of the terrible pizza crust and confirmed my suspicions: there was garlic powder in it. Great, not only did I just have a bite of a bizarre stoner pizza that came from a debatably racist pizza restaurant, I accidentally slipped garlic in it.
To reflect the mood a little better, I decided to make another one, with the most productive cereal ever created: Fiber One.
Fiber One is a powerhouse of fiber. One serving contains 65% of your daily suggested allowance of fiber. That means two bowls of this stuff in one sitting makes you take a monster shit the next day. I love Fiber One, because it exists mainly for you to grunt out a healthy footlong every morning.
I initially considered using tomato sauce instead of the fake cream cheese frosting, but then I thought, maybe this would improve upon the Froot Loops version, so I kept everything else the same.
If you’re going to eat a silly cereal-topped pizza, you might as well get the added benefit of getting a healthy dump out of it.
I added plenty of cheese on top of the cereal to prevent unnecessary burning.
Those little brown squiggles look like hamster pellets. Maybe Fiber One is hamster pellets.
I have to say, I actually laughed when I took this thing out of the oven.
I mean, just look at it. It’s hilarious. Never in a million years would I have thought I would one day make a half-assed pizza with a bunch of dry cereal on top. If you had told me when I was a college kid just starting out in engineering school (as you can see by my resulting English degree, that went well), I’d be putting cereal on pizza at nearly 40-years-old, I would have stared at you like you were out of your goddamn mind. But here we are today, celebrating me at the top of my game.
Do you want to know something? This pizza was way better than the Froot Loops one. I can’t say it was good, but it was definitely better. What I appreciated about it, and hated about it, is how much chewing it took to take down a bite. Imagine yourself eating dry mulch with cheese on top, and congratulations, you were in my kitchen with me today. At least I got an added benefit out of it, compared to that Froot Loops pizza, and that will come tomorrow.
That went about as well as could be expected. Hopefully you got some chuckles out of it, because I’m about ready to chuckle out of my ass. Please, don’t forget to share this on social media, because I do not wish to have eaten cereal on pizza in vain, plus it boosts this newsletter like crazy:
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For those of you paid subscribers, Friday’s content involves a little-known combination of chili and an unusual accompaniment that hasn’t made its way out of Iowa and Nebraska. Love you guys, and see some of you Friday.
Would anything make this *good*?
Is there anything that would complement or enhance the presence of fruit loops?
In any case, good to know about the texture of the fruit loops. I once made a cheese pizza topped with Cheetos and the texture was beyond awful.
I-,
Ghost pizza!
Froot Loops do suck lol, I prefer Raisin Bran over it.