Meatball Cups
A Delicious Pop-able Treat
These delicious Meatball Cups are baked up in a buttery pizza dough with cheese and sauce. You can make these ahead of time, bake them, and reheat them for those busy days.
I have made these meatball cups and frozen a bunch. They thaw beautifully and reheat quickly in an air fryer or toaster oven and make a perfect party appetizer or movie night snack.
These are also a great meal to bring to a friend who needs some dinner time help. Take them a couple of salad kits and these meatball cups.
This will be a real delight!
The Dough
This recipe is fairly easy to follow as you will see from the recipe card below. I use a pizza dough and cut rounds with a cookie cutter.
If you do not have cookie cutters or an appropriate size glass, you can easily just cut squares and press them out to the correct size.
You will need to flatten the dough so cut about a three inch square and then press the dough into the muffin tins and up the sides.
Marinara In The Jar
I like to use pizza sauce for this recipe but I thin it out with a little warm water. This is just personal preference.
I also recommend using a good Marinara Sauce because I like the sauce to be a little more chunky than pizza sauce. My absolute favorite marinara is the black label one from Aldi.
This is all personal preference, however, so use the sauce that you like best.
Serve It With A Salad
While I typically make these for an appetizer, they can be a complete meal with a nice salad served on the side. I think that my Pizza Salad would be absolute perfection with these Meatball Cups.
I also think my Blue Cheese Chopped Salad would be a great recipe for pairing with these delicious bites.
Meatball Cups Recipe
While meatball cups make a great appetizer, they can also be a wonderful, make ahead dinner. Serve them up with a side of salad for a complete meal.
Ingredients
- 1lb Ground Beef
- 1 C of Crushed Crackers like Saltines
- 1 C Powdered Parmesan Cheese
- 2 T of Dried Parsley
- 1t Salt
- 1 t Pepper
- 1 T Garlic Powder
- 1/2 C Minced Onion
- 1 T Onion Powder
- 1 Tube of Pillsbury pizza dough
- 1 C of Pizza Sauce or Marinara
- Dried parsley for garnish
Instructions
- Combine Beef with all the ingredients except the marinara and the potato dumplings.
- Mix all the ingredients in the beef and form into 1 1/2 inch meatballs. You need 12.
- Roll the pizza dough out and carefully use a cookie cutter or glass to cut 3 inch circles, you can also just cut squares if you don't mind the look. You will need 12 rounds.
- Spray a muffin pan with non stick spray and place a dumpling round into individual cups.
- Press the dough down and up the sides of the muffin tin spots.
- Place a meatball into each of the dough cups and put about 1 T of pizza sauce into each cup.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
- Remove from oven and top with more sauce, ricotta, parmesan or mozzarella cheese can also be added to the top.
- Sprinkle with dried parsley.