Are you on Pinterest? I am and I luv it.
And I could count the 768 reasons why I love Pinterest… but instead, you could go over to Pinterest, look at my pins and see those 768 reasons. SPOILER ALERT: You’ll notice I pin a lot of recipes.
I like to use Pinterest to help me with menu planning. I have started to save recipes from various websites onto Pinterest so that I can quickly find them in one spot. I also love that Pinterest lets me follow some of my foodie friends… so I get to see what new recipes they are trying, too!
If you’re on Pinterest, you can find me here.
Today’s new-to-me recipe is the super easy Jalapeño Popper CUPS that I made for Super Bowl Sunday.
Jalapeño Poppers? Bien.
A new twist on a food that I already like? Muy bien.
Now, if you have read my last few blog posts you will have picked up on a couple of things that have gone on at our house lately. Pretend like the list below is in random order and that these “items” may or may not be related to one another.
- We went on a looonnng vacation back in December.
- We have a very naughty cat.
- We’ve had some projects going on in our house the last several weeks. Projects that closed our family room for a while. By definition “family room” is the room that our entire 3 person family lives in when we are not eating, sleeping or going to the bathroom.
Now, I will not confirm or deny how or who or in what way these things relate to one another… I will just say that our latest major home improvement project finally ended this past week, everyone is in a better mood–including the naughty offender…oops, I mean… the naughty cat and I am a lot less cranky than I was a week ago when everything was torn apart.
So many, many weeks ago… before we closed our family room to construction… weeks before the Super Bowl… I found this recipe for Jalapeño Popper Cups. We usually stay home for the Super Bowl, sometimes we invite a couple of friends over, sometimes we invite MIL and FIL over, but regardless of who we are with… I always end up making WAY too much food.
I decided this year would be different.
This year would be lighter.
This year would be quick, easy and we would not eat ourselves into a food coma.
And then last Friday, two days before the Super Bowl, it finally dawned on me that due to the home improvement project inspired by our naughty, naughty cat… the only room in the our house with a functioning TV that we could watch the big game on… was in our bedroom.
Oooops.
I guess we could have had a family picnic on the bed?
Instead, we invited ourselves over to MIL and FILs house with the promise to bring 1.) Jolie and 2.) Food.
They said, “Yes.”
:)
Because I promised myself I would not go crazy with food again this year… I decided to take quick, easy, finger foods. Fresh veggies, cheese, crackers, a bag of Hot Buffalo Wing Pretzel Pieces, pin wheel sandwiches and these cute little jalapeño popper cups.
No chili this year. No wings. No nachos.
Quick. Easy. Light.
Garrett, of course, thought this idea was absolutely ridiculous and decided to pick up fried chicken from Popeye’s to go with my “quick, easy, light” menu.
Here’s the recipe!
INGREDIENTS:
- 12 mini phyllo tart shells
- 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
- 2 jalapeño peppers, seeded and chopped
- 1 tablespoon hot pepper sauce
- bacon bits
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place phyllo cups on a baking sheet.
2. Stir together cream cheese, Cheddar cheese, jalapeño, and hot sauce in a bowl. Spoon mixture into phyllo cups. Sprinkle bacon bits on top. Bake in preheated oven until golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes. Serve warm.
I knew that we would be busy on Super Bowl Sunday and I wouldn’t have a ton of time to mess around with assembling these poppers once we got home. I decided to make these on Saturday and stick them in the freezer so that I would only have to bake them on Sunday. This plan worked perfectly. Here’s what I did:
Lined up all my ingredients, including the jalapeños that I deveined and deseeded…and the cheddar cheese that I shredded.
I softened the cream cheese in the microwave a bit… I started with 15 seconds and then just added 5 seconds at a time until I liked the texture. Mushed it up with a fork.
Added in my shredded cheddar.
Stirred in the diced jalapeños and the hot pepper sauce.
I decided it would be easier to fill the phyllo shells if piped the filling. You could use a fancy pastry bag… or just grab a quart size bag, turn over the top and stand it up inside a container as an “extra set of hands”. I like using pint size freezer containers to hold my bag while I fill it up, but any wide mouth glass or jar would work.
Fill ‘er up.
Cut the corner of your bag and start filling the shells!
I ended up getting exactly 15 of these little cups… which is what came in my box of shells.
You could fry up some bacon and crumble on top, but we keep a jar of “Real” bacon bits in the fridge, so I used that.
All topped off.
Now, since I was making these ahead… I just slid the tray of shells inside a gallon size freezer bag and stuck them in the freezer. You could probably make these at least a couple of weeks ahead.
On Sunday afternoon, I pulled them out of the freezer. Put them on a baking sheet and threw them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Because they were in the freezer overnight, they needed at least 20 minutes… I might have left them in for a bit longer.
These were REALLY good and I would definitely make them again. I actually have another box of phyllo shells in the freezer, so I could pretty much throw these together whenever!
Super quick, super easy and really tasty.
For a milder taste, they would also be good without the hot pepper sauce. I actually think these might be better with wonton wrapper cups instead of the phyllo shells. I
Make them sometime!
Jess Henri 