Hi guys, it’s Chris Nease here from Celebrations At Home and I’m very excited to be working with Homes.com and bringing you ideas for small gatherings and entertaining. To let you know a little about me, I’ve been creating parties and entertaining for over 15 years, and styling and writing about it for 4 years. I believe the most important thing about entertaining is your guest list. The next most important thing? – adding style and fun! Whether it’s through food, decor, or activities I’ll be sharing lots of suggestions for incorporating style into your next gathering.
For my first official post, I’m sharing a twist on a classic game day appetizer. With Super Bowl just around the corner you’ll need something to serve or take to the viewing party, and jalapeno poppers are always a hit. I decided to make them with blue cheese instead of cheddar, plus I have a tip to share, about wrapping them with bacon…
Blue Cheese Jalapeno Poppers
- 4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
- 4 oz crumbled blue cheese
- 6 fresh jalapeno peppers
- 12 slices center cut bacon
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Cut peppers in half lengthwise, and scrape out seeds and white membrane.
- Combine cream cheese and blue cheese together in a small bowl. Fill the inside of each pepper half with cheese mixture.
- Wrap a slice of bacon around each filled half and secure with a toothpick. Place on broiler rack with pan underneath so bacon drippings can drain off.
- Cook about 20-25 minutes, or until bacon is done.
TIP: In order to insure that my bacon is cooked crisp, but peppers still have a firm bite, I like to cook the bacon slightly before wrapping it. This also allows you to render the fat out of the bacon too, so you don’t have it draining all over the poppers. Cook the bacon just until it begins to show color and start to shrink up, then drain and cool it on paper towels until you can handle it. For this method I cooked the poppers as directed for 10 minutes, covered with aluminum foil and cooked for another 10-15 minutes.
If you’re a fan of blue cheese you should love these. Make sure to clean out all the seeds in each pepper or else you will have very hot poppers!
For more recipes and “big game” decorating ideas you can see my guest posts from the Fall Tailgating Series. Just incorporate the teams colors that will be playing each other. Here I simply used turf grass as the table foundation, and black and white striped take-out boxes that mimic referee uniforms to hold crunchy snacks. A few football accessory pieces complete the look.
