32 Best Sweet Pizza Sauce Recipes Your Kids Will Love

Pizza sauce can be super simple – just crush tomatoes and add oregano! (Basil and garlic are also good additions to ‘red’ sauce.) Or it could be a complex marinara with a massive spice mix.

That said, not everyone is a fan of the tangy mix of spices and acidity from most pizza sauces. Much like many, there are kids and adults who love some sweetness in the mix.

You might even opt for a ‘white’ cheese sauce. You could choose to make your sauce sweet, savory, spicy, earthy, or something in between. Today, we’ll explore the sweeter side with this list of 33  Best Sweet Pizza Sauce Recipes!

1. Iron Mike’s Sweet Pizza Sauce

No, it’s not that Iron Mike, but this sweet pizza sauce still packs a punch. The secret is brown sugar. It brings out the saccharine flavor without overpowering your other herbs and spices.

Honey helps sauce hold together, as does minced carrot. It’s where the tinge of sweetness came from. The herbal notes come from basil, oregano, parsley, and thyme, while the cloves and pepper give your sauce its kick.

 

2. Detroit-Style Pizza Sauce

We Americans can get pretty fierce about our regional pizzas. Whether it’s deep-dish ‘casserole’ pizza from Chicago or ‘skinny crust’ wide-base pizza from New York. This Detroit sweet pizza sauce has a one-pot recipe that’s heavy on onion powder.

 It has both crushed and whole tomatoes, so it’s a sauce with a lot of body. Most of the herbs can be dried or flaked, leading to a nice incorporation in the sauce.

 

3. Oh Sweet Basil Pizza Sauce

This sweet pizza sauce has the standard basil, oregano, and olive oil. But it adds brown sugar, parmesan, and butter, so the sauce feels extra creamy and luxurious. The recipe has pepper flakes and uses onion powder rather than fresh onions. It combines tomato paste and tomato sauce to heighten thickness and flavor. Pre-season the oils in a slow cooker for best results.

 

4. Susan’s Sweet Pizza Sauce

Olive oil is a common base for pizza sauce. It’s healthy and it gives that authentic Italian feel. It also uses tomato paste – which is drier and more concentrated than fresh or canned tomatoes. To account for that, sauces that rely on paste must have water or another additional source of liquid. Add a little at a time or your sauce will soon turn into soup!

 

5. Senior Skillet Sweet Pizza Sauce

Tomato puree is a convenient starting point for red pizza sauce recipes. It already has the right consistency so all you’re doing is adding flavor. The sweetness in this ‘senior sauce’ comes from honey and brown sugar. But if you don’t like honey, you can replace it with corn syrup – assuming you don’t mind its processed starch and additives. Honey is more natural.

 

6. Chef John’s Secret Pizza Sauce

Here’s another recipe that sneaks some fish into your marinara. It’s just a dash though – no one will know it’s in there unless you tell them. And it’s anchovy so it’s unlikely to trigger shellfish allergies. The recipe incorporates both dry and fresh oregano. No basil though. Another tip is to add a pinch of baking soda to counterbalance excess acidity in the sauce.

 

7. Exquisite Pizza Sauce

When your sweet tooth needs a healthy fix, honey is your go-to. It’s natural – though not necessarily organic because the bees may have fed off chemically-treated flowers. But, it’s still the main ingredient for this sweet sauce!

 Remember though – honey has more calories than sugar (64 vs 49 per tablespoon). But it’s sweeter, so you can use less of it. The recipe also has marjoram and three kinds of pepper for extra spice.

 

8. Five-Minute Pizza Sauce

Some of us simmer our pizza sauce for an hour – or at least thirty minutes. Others prefer it raw. So if you don’t mind your marinara barely cooked, try this 5-minute sweet pizza sauce recipe. It relies heavily on garlic and only uses a teaspoon each of salt, sugar, and mixed spices. It has fresh tomatoes and processed tomato paste so you don’t need to add water. All of that in a mere five minutes! Perfect for some last-minute prep.

9. Pizza Essentials Sweet Sauce

Onion powder might have preservatives, so this recipe starts with dehydrated onions for you to crush at home. It also has tomato paste, diced tomatoes, parsley, oregano, and basil. When you cook your sauce using whole, sliced, or diced tomatoes, you may choose to blend the sauce after it cools. This gives the sauce a smoother texture, but it’s an optional step.

 

10. Two-way Indian Pizza Sauce

Indian food is flavourful because they make many of their ingredients from scratch – even cheese (they call it paneer). So you can do the full version of this sauce but when you’re in a rush, try the raw ketchup-based shortcut that seems built for American kitchens! In both versions, the spice mix includes the usual basil and oregano plus paprika, garlic, and chili.

 

11. Quick Homemade Pizza Sauce

The guests arrive in 5 minutes and you forgot the pizza sauce! Here’s a simple fix. It’s vegan and it has nine ingredients so you won’t feel like you’ve skimped. Also, consider getting red spatulas specifically for your pizza sauce prep. It saves hours of dishwashing grief. This no-cook sauce has tomato paste + sauce, oregano, onion + garlic powder, and Italian seasoning.

 

12. Easy No-Cook Sweet Pizza Sauce

Adding ketchup to pizza sauce often means you can leave out the honey or sugar. Ketchup is a good go-to for ‘raw sauce’. You can also a few teaspoons to sweeten cooked sauces. But no-cook recipes can still use fresh fruit. This one uses canned tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, garlic, basil, and pepper (black, red, or both). No oregano. Just mix everything in a blender.

 

13. Lizzy T’s Perfect Pizza Sauce

Sauces with onions and fresh garlic take longer. They’re fussier too because you need to tend the onions carefully, ensuring you get the right color and texture (e.g. transparent vs caramelized vs golden brown). So if you’re the type of cook that prefers to toss everything in the pan and cover, you will love this recipe. Simply simmer the whole lot for half an hour.

 

14. Grandma Gina’s Italian Pizza Sauce

We all know grandma’s food slaps different. So for a pizza sauce with class and authenticity, try this Italian Nonnina Gina’s version. It’s a long video … but it’s worth the wait, both in cooking and watching. And she shows you how to make the pizza too (yes, she prays for the dough to rise right!) The sauce has peeled tomatoes, onions, garlic, oregano, and fresh basil.

 

15. Chicago-Style Sweet Pizza Sauce

Cinnamon is an interesting (and unexpected) way to add some sweetness to your pizza sauce. This recipe uses a lot of sugar and a little cinnamon. Enrich this flavor with regular pizza sauce ingredients – basil and oregano. The recipe uses onion and garlic in their powdered forms. This is less fussy, more concentrated, and the powder fuses faster into the sauce.

 

16. Hebbar’s Sweet Pizza Sauce

Canned tomatoes have a stronger flavor than fresh ones because lots of them have additives. But if you want to go organic, use fresh tomatoes and blanch them, peel, mash or blend, then add the recommend pizza sauce spices. In this sweet pizza sauce recipe, half the tomatoes are blended and the other half are deseeded, chopped, then added to the sauce.

 

17. Crunchy Creamy Sweet Pizza Sauce

No time to simmer your sauce? Try this 5-minute recipe that needs no heat (though you do need electricity). Put crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and fresh garlic into your food processor and pulse until well mixed. Crushed tomatoes often have intrinsic sweetness, but if the sauce isn’t saccharine enough for your palate, you can add sugar.

 

18. My Crazy Sweet Pizza Sauce

However you choose to pronounce it, turmeric isn’t something you’d expect in pizza sauce. But it does have an earthy sweetness, and apart from sugar and ketchup, turmeric heightens the sucrose in this sauce. Blanch the tomatoes so they’re easier to peel and crush. Mash them in that same boiling water then add turmeric, oil, and everything else. Whisk to mix.

 

19. Budget Bytes Thick & Rich Pizza Sauce

Pizza sauce needs to be smooth enough to cook fully but thick enough to avoid soggy dough. And if you plan to use your sweet pizza sauce as a dip, it needs to be even thicker. To achieve that result, this pizza sauce is simmered for half an hour to reduce and slightly congeal it. But not too much. Adding tomato paste to the crushed tomatoes also helps ‘stiffen’ your sauce.

 

20. One-Pot Sweet Pizza Sauce

A common tactic for pizza sauce is to boil the tomatoes in very little water then add the other ingredients. But it’s easy to ‘overdose’ your liquid levels and make your sauce too soupy. So this sweet pizza sauce recipe skips the boiling. And unlike many recipes that skimp on garlic, (four measly cloves?!? That’s nothing!) this one uses 8 to 10 chopped cloves. Perfect!

 

21. Cheryl Williams’ Flavourful Pizza Sauce

In a sweet pizza sauce recipe, the sugar can come from honey, ketchup, sugar, or even sweet veggies like beetroot and carrot. This recipe uses tomato sauce, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and dried herbs (basil, oregano, parsley). It has sugar too. And it’s a no-cook recipe so the garlic is in powdered form – much easier to mix in a bowl since it won’t be heated.

 

22. Vito’s Real Tomato Sauce

Because you’re making Napoli-Style pizza, you want to use San Marzano canned tomatoes. If authenticity matters to you, use imported cans from Italy (as opposed to San-Marzano-Style cans like DiNapoli, which often ship from New Jersey or California. This three-ingredient sauce has tomatoes, sea salt, and basil added directly into the can. Mix with a hand blender.

 

23. Easy Vegan Homemade Pizza Sauce

We’ve seen a sauce with 9 ingredients. Here’s one with 8: plain tomato sauce or puree, oregano, basil, thyme, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, and maple syrup. The latter is unexpected but oh so good for natural sweetness. You could add more salt or pepper flakes as optional ingredients if that suits your palate. Mix and blend in a food processor.

 

24. Foodie Tomato Sauce for Pizza

For sauces that use whole tomatoes, skinning can be tricky. Many home cooks end up using tongs or tweezers to sift the peels out after the sauce is cooked – which is annoying. Instead, cut a shallow ‘x’ on the base of your tomatoes (before blanching or boiling) and use them for peeling. Simmer the sauce for 60 to 90 minutes then use it chunky or mash it if you prefer.

 

25. Sweet Cayenne’s 5-Minute Pizza Sauce

For no-cook pizza sauce recipes, you’re better off using canned tomatoes. The preservatives and process of canning make them seem less raw. Powdered garlic/onion and dried herbs are ideal as well because they mix into the cold tomatoes more easily. This pure-essentials recipe only has tomatoes, (fresh) basil, salt, pepper, and oil. Just mix, mash, and smush it all.

 

26. Matt’s Homemade Pizza Sauce

For this recipe, your sauce mixture is first blended then fried. And it uses a combination of whole and pureed tomatoes, both canned with sauce or juice. Using this can-juice makes the sauce smoother and more flavourful than adding plain water. This sweet pizza sauce recipe has fennel and parmesan plus pizza sauce components (oregano, basil, Italian seasoning).

 

27. Christina’s Cucina Italian Style Pizza Sauce

Would it surprise you that Italians prefer their pizza sauce raw? And they don’t add sugar either. Their sauce style is surprisingly simple. We already saw Vito from Prova’s version – the one where he just added salt and basil to a can of crushed tomatoes. This version has cherry tomatoes, sea salt, parmesan, fresh basil, oregano, and olive oil. Just mix and mash.

 

28. Sweet Adjeley’s Pizza Sauce

For those of us who want our sweet pizza sauce cooked, here’s an alternative. It uses six garlic cloves – which may seem like a lot. But we’ve seen recipes on this list with 18 to 20 cloves!

So use as much (or as little) as your system can digest. This recipe has ginger too. All of that along with some oregano. If you like your sauces hot, add pepper flakes or cayenne, then blend, fry, and simmer the batch.

 

29. Swasthi’s Sweet Pizza Sauce

Must sweet pizza sauce recipes have sugar? Not necessarily. But it helps to balance out the flavors. So you can use more or less than the recipe recommends, depending on your taste.

This recipe only has one teaspoon of sugar plus chili flakes. The garlic is listed in tablespoons rather than cloves so that you can play with those portions as well. Especially if you love pungent flavors from the spice.

 

30. Cravings Intense Pizza Sauce

Let’s close with an aptly-named sauce to soothe your hunger pangs. It will surely make your craving more intense, that’s for sure!

 It’s not a quick recipe – it needs 30 to 40 minutes on the stovetop. The basic ingredients are sliced onions, minced garlic, dried oregano, salt, and pepper. You could use canned ones or overripe fresh ones – preferably plum. If you’re using fresh tomatoes, you’ll need tomato paste for extra sugar.

 

31. Just A Pinch’s Ultimate Sweet Pizza Sauce

As a part of the Pizza Essential series, Any Anderson from Just a Pinch is here to give you his ultimate sweet pizza sauce. As he describes, it’s not overly sweet that it’s overpowering, just enough that you can taste a tinge.

The result is a tangy and acidic sauce with a sweetness you cannot miss. So, try this one out and create an ultimate pizza of your own!

 

32. All Recipe’s Sicilian Pizza Sauce

As many of you know, authentic traditional Sicilian pizza is among the most popular sweet pizza in the world. And, with this recipe, you can make a batch of its sauce in the comfort of your home!

As checking this recipe, you might notice one thing: there is no sugar, so where is the sweetness coming from? Well, the secret lies in two onions.

In Conclusion

With that, you can now create the best pizza for the kids! What’s your favorite from these 33 best sweet pizza sauce recipes? Tell us about it in the comments if you try any(or all) of it!