It doesn’t exactly take a genius to realize the two of us love pizza. It’s a weekly ritual for us, and Pizza Labs are a highlight of every month. But sometimes there isn’t pizza dough on hand. Sometimes going out for pizza isn’t realistic. Sometimes you need to get creative. And today was a perfect opportunity for doing so, considering Long Island has been blasted with a snowstorm for the umpteenth time this winter.

Naturally I found myself craving pizza, not having eaten any in five days, but didn’t want to risk driving through six inches of wet, sloppy snow in my hilarious PT Cruiser. What is a man to do?

No, no, not quite that.

One of the best assets of pizza as a food is its simplicity. Sure, our acclaim features us creating convoluted pizzas that would make most middle-aged Italian men shed a single, angry tear, but at the heart of it, pizza is merely bread with sauce and cheese on top. Because of this, it’s incredibly versatile and easy to throw together through improvisation. As a result, we’ve all come to see the novelty of pizza bagels, especially thanks to the likes of Bagel Bites. While not a suitable replacement for the real thing, they work in a pinch and are good as their own little thing. Incidentally, pizza bagels were apparently invented on Long Island, close to NYC, which if you’re familiar with the area makes sense, considering virtually every strip mall contains at least a pizzeria or bagel shop (chinese food places too, but that’s another can of worms). However there’s another acclaimed pizza spinoff out there, namely pizza muffins, or pizza English muffins.

English muffins are a staple of many homes due to their favorable reputation in the breakfast realm. Nooks and crannys sound mildly repulsive when being applied to almost anything else, but for some reason they are endearing for this food, since they help capture the various toppings we add on top of them. Naturally this makes for a perfect opportunity to add the aforementioned sauce and cheese, because hell, in the end English muffins are really just little biscuits, or in other words, bread. So why not?

I don’t feel that listing steps is really all that necessary here since the concept itself is simple enough. You cut your muffins in half, spread some tomato sauce on top, add your cheese of choice, any toppings you like, and pop them into the oven at 425 deg. Remove them when they resemble little pizzas, about 7-10 minutes, and you’re all set.

For reference, the pizza muffins on the left are cheddar bacon. So see? You can even get creative with toppings here too. Engage in your own, mini-pizza labs! They’re easy to make and satisfy even the most ardent pizza cravings. (Unless you’re a pothead, in which case, give me some valuable feedback since I cannot speak from experience.)