This is a sponsored post. It involves pizza – yum!

When I first heard that Chicago Town were making a special limited edition X Factor pizza, my first reaction was “what’s X-Factor about it?”. I wondered if it might have Simon Cowell’s face on top of it or something, which I didn’t think would be that appealing! I must confess I was relieved to find out it was nothing of the sort. I must also confess that I don’t watch the X Factor, but I do LOVE pizza, so when the geek family were offered the chance to to test out the X factor pizza I couldn’t say no.

The official blurb tells us that Chicago Town’s X Factor pizza is “made with Chicago Town TAKEAWAY’s famous fresh dough that rises in the oven, it’s generously topped with extra-large pepperoni, spicy beef, peppers, red onion and a tantalising special BBQ sauce stuffed-crust – a guaranteed winner”. It retails for £3.79, which is certainly a lot cheaper than you’d get any “real” takeaway pizza around here! I picked one up in my local Waitrose.

When I got the pizza home I was a bit worried that it wasn’t going to fit in my freezer! We have one of those American style “side by side” fridge freezers, and the freezer unit is not particularly big. The pizza only just fitted in width-ways, and was quite cozy length-ways as well! Thankfully I managed to wedge it in, and it stayed safe until it was time to cook!

The pizza was easy to cook. It comes on its own little ovenproof tray, so there’s none of that business where you place it directly on the oven shelf and then have to scrape it off onto a plate when it’s cooked like some other pizzas I might mention… It cooks directly from frozen in approximately 20 minutes, which is quicker than our local takeaway pizza establishment can produce a pizza.

As you can see from the picture, it cooked beauifully, and the crust rose in a very satisfying manner. I must confess I was nervous about tasting the pizza, as I’m not usually a big fan of BBQ sauce. However I was pleasantly surprised by the taste – it was neither too bitter nor too sweet, and I actually really liked it. In fact I thought the pizza was delicious overall. The geekdaddy and the geekdaughter both enjoyed it too, although the geekdaughter found the small pepperoni pieces too spicy, so we let her leave those (well, actually the geekdaddy “helped” her with them!). The stuffed crust added a new twist – the geekdaughter is not usually too keen on pizza crust, but she liked the taste of the BBQ sauce inside the crust and completely cleared her plate.

 

Another bonus that you get with the X Factor pizza is that each box has a code printed inside which you can redeem at the Chicago Town X Factor website for either a free music download or gamble for the chance of winning a voucher for a free pizza. When I got the pizza I was intending to take up the free music download offer, but after having eaten the pizza I decided it was so nice that I’d like more, so I opted to gamble on the chance of a free pizza. This means that I didn’t see how the music download worked or what the selection was like. Sadly I didn’t get the free pizza either.

So that’s the Chicago Town X Factor pizza. Very yummy indeed, and no Simon Cowell in sight 🙂 The whole family enjoyed it, and it’s definitely something I’ll be buying again.

 Disclosure: I was provided with free pizza, a pizza cutter and a pair of oven gloves for review purposes. I have also received a payment for writing this review. All opinions stated are my own.