Slow Cooker Pepperoni Pizza Bake

Original Recipe

Ingredients

1 can (16.3 oz) refrigerated biscuits (such as Pillsbury Grands)

1 cup sliced pepperoni

3 teaspoons Italian seasoning

1 cup pizza sauce of your choice

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (8 oz)

Directions

1. Spray insert of 6- to 7-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Open and separate the refrigerated biscuits into 8 biscuits.
2. Cut each biscuit into 6 pieces; place in large bowl.
3. Cut 1 cup pepperoni slices into quarters. Place half of the quarters in bowl with biscuit pieces. Add 3 teaspoons Italian seasoning to bowl with cut biscuits and pepperoni quarters; toss to mix.
4. Place biscuit mixture as evenly as possible in bottom of slow-cooker insert.
5. Spread the pizza sauce evenly over top of biscuits, making sure to get some sauce around edges so that biscuits are not touching insert without sauce in between.
6. Sprinkle the shredded mozzarella cheese and remaining half of pepperoni over top, trying to keep cheese away from touching insert.
7. Cover top of insert with large paper towel. Place slow-cooker lid on top of paper towel. (This will prevent condensation from dripping onto biscuits during cooking.)
8. Cook on High heat setting 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hour. (Not all slow cookers cook the same. Test for doneness after 1 hour and 30 minutes by inserting knife into center to make sure biscuits are fully baked; outer edge will be dark golden brown.)
9. Remove bubble-up bake from slow-cooker insert while warm to prevent biscuits from sticking to insert.
10. Serve warm.

First of all I couldn't seem to find grands biscuits that weren't cinnamon buns so I used Pillsbury flaky rolls.

3 teaspoons of Italian seasoning is WAY TOO MUCH!!! Even the 2 tsps I used was a bit much for me. I think 1 tsp would be plenty! Of course I added garlic powder to my seasoning too (about 1/2 tsp). I used basil and garlic pizza sauce. I think this was a fatal mistake. It had an oddly sweet edge to it that we didn't like. I cooked this for longer than the instructions said on high and found that there were still some uncooked bits of biscuits in the center. Inserting a knife was useless cause the cheese coated the whole thing.

I also added about 2/3 of the cheese then the toppings and then the last 1/3 of cheese so that the toppings weren't falling off the top. I think you could safely cut the cheese back to 1-1.5 cups too!

Overall I think this could be a decent recipe if you cut back the Italian seasoning, used plain pizza sauce and cooked it in the oven and not the slow cooker! I did reheat my leftovers in the oven for lunch and even found those tasted better and had a more well done mouth feel than the fresh out of the slow cooker result!