December Recipe: Bacon Jalapeño Poppers

I did have big plans for my December recipe, but I have had to put them on the back burner. My relatives are visiting, and as soon as they leave, I'm leaving for my own vacation! So in the meantime, I decided to try out a little recipe that I saw on Pioneer Woman on Food Network. I dug up the recipe from her website and added some of my own modifications to whip up this tasty appetizer.

The recipe I used is here. My first modification was to add some shredded cheddar cheese to the cream cheese (about a 3:1 ratio of cream cheese to cheddar). I also added a clove of minced garlic just for some flavor and an extra little kick (but mostly because I'm a garlic-loving monster). Lastly, I did not use toothpicks purely because I did not have toothpicks and did not want to make a trip out in the storm just for them. For the most part, the bacon stayed wrapped pretty well, though I guess it could have been neater (as you can see in the picture above).

Surprisingly, the hardest part for me was just cleaning out the insides of the jalapeños. After that, it was smooth sailing. 

Stuffing them was quite a messy endeavor as well because I was wearing gloves.

Oh, and one more modification was that I cut the strips of bacon in half rather than thirds because it just seemed right. Who really is going to complain about having more bacon per jalapeño anyway? 

The finished products!

Mmm, bacon. I think some of the jalapeños still had a teensy bit of seeds left in them because eating these was like playing spicy roulette. One would be moderately spicy and the next would be on fire. Oops! Next time, I'll probably be more careful. Maybe.

And with that, I have successfully completed my new year's resolution! I've never actually followed through on any of my resolutions, so I am quite proud of myself (though I did kind of cheat one month, but I made up for it!). I'm still aiming for another couple recipes this month, just as extra credit, so I'll post those as I go. I think that one new recipe per month was a completely achievable goal, yet motivating enough to get stuff done. I'm probably going to do it again for next year. And maybe even increase it to two per month if I'm being ambitious? That kind of scares me, so we'll see about that.

-jennkay

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Eggless Baking: Rugelach Pinwheels

Yes, yes, I am obsessed with Smitten Kitchen. I think that's pretty clear from my track record. Anyway, after refreshing constantly for new recipes, I had the brilliant idea of going back through her older recipes for inspiration. Specifically, I went through the cookie list because I was tired of making the same old cookies over and over for friends and family. One recipe that immediately caught my attention was for rugelach pinwheels. I didn't even know what they were much less tasted them before, but the pictures were enticing and the recipe seemed straightforward enough. 

For my first time making an unknown cookie, I think they turned out pretty well:

And some process pictures I snapped along the way:

Some lessons that I learned during the process:

1. Rugelach, which I had for the first time, reminded me a bit of Pepperidge Farm Verona cookies but with walnuts and raisins added to the mix. I'm not sure if that's how they're traditionally supposed to taste, but I liked it. It also went well with a nice, strong black tea. I unintentionally had a little tea party with the family serving a delicious Assam alongside these cookies. 

2. The filling didn't look like much when I spread it across the sheet of dough, but after it's all sliced up, there was clearly enough in there. Good thing that I trusted the recipe!

3. When slicing rolls of dough into individual cookies, I noticed the dough warming up to room temp pretty quickly. As that happened, it became progressively harder to cut them neatly because they squished and lost shape. So I suppose the lesson is to cut them fast while they're still cold. 

4. Jam is sticky. When you combine it with sugar and melt it in the oven, it gets stickier. Even with my silicone baking mats, I had to be careful when prying the cookies off. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but something to be mindful of.

5. Eggless cookies can be awesome! I was worried when I noticed the absence of egg in this cookie recipe, but they turned out just fine without them. I have already forwarded this recipe to a friend who doesn't really buy eggs. Some of my other tried and true eggless cookie recipes are pecan sandies, chocolate chip shortbread cookies, and jam thumbprint cookies.

Anyway, I'm not going to count this as my December recipe because I actually did this in November. Plus, I have grand plans for my December recipe. We'll see if I can follow through on that.

-jennkay

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