Mmmmm......

  A few weeks ago I made some cheesecakes for a banquet dinner. There were three plain cheesecakes and two chocolate cheesecakes. They were both very good and I had a hard time figuring out which one was my favorite. Actually, I never really did come to a decision. Who knows? We might need to have a redo.

   I still have not figured out why cheesecake has such a reputation for being hard to make. It really isn't. It may crack on the top, but you can usually hide that {or cover it with cherries}. They are really quite easy and anyone who loves to bake should try it at some point. Of course, I'm not a connoisseur so maybe it is hard and I just haven't figured it out yet. Either way, nobody has ever complained.

A New Project

   One thing I really enjoy is cooking. Not that eating has anything to do with that. I'm kidding, it totally does. What can I say? I was born and raised in the south. I hope to occasionally share some of the recipes that my family loves and new things that I try out. So to start that project off, today I want to share the recipe for Pepper Poppers. These things are delicious!

You will need :

        ~ 18 jalapeno peppers
        ~ one 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
        ~ 1 cup grated cheddar cheese/pepper jack if you like 'em hot
        ~ about 1 chopped green onion
        ~ 18 slices bacon, cut in half
        ~ barbecue sauce
        ~ toothpicks  
        ~ rubber gloves!

Please, whatever you do, don't fail to wear rubber gloves when preparing these peppers. You might be tough. You might not think you'll rub your eyes. Trust me, it's worth the trouble to find some!

   Preheat oven to 275 degrees

   First, slice the peppers in half lengthwise and scrape the seeds out. Try to keep the stems on the peppers and cut them in half also. In the end they look very nice this way. Next, either in a mixer or by hand combine the cream cheese, cheddar cheese and green onions. Fill each jalapeno half level with the cream cheese mixture and wrap each half with bacon. Secure the bacon with a toothpick. Rub peppers with barbecue sauce. Place on a baking pan and bake for 1 hour or until the bacon is done.

   If you don't like bacon, these can easily be made without it, but in my humble opinion they are not nearly as good that way. We use Sonny's sweet barbecue sauce from Sam's Club and it really adds to the flavor. Also, I bake mine on a cooling rack so they are not sitting in the grease that cooks out of the bacon.

   The original recipe, which is not quite the same as the one I use, came from The Pioneer Woman Cooks cookbook by Ree Drummond. I received this cookbook as a Christmas present and unfortunately haven't been able to try very many recipes from it yet. The ones I have tried were delicious! Most definitely not low-cal, but good all the same.