Ingredients:
- Package of bacon, slices cut in half cross-wise
- Package of cream cheese (8 oz) softened
- 10-12 jalapenos
- garlic powder
The easiest way to cut your bacon strips in half is to do it in the package. Don't open the bacon, just take a large knife and cut package in half cross-wise, therefore cutting the bacon strips in half
- Soften cream cheese to room temperature or unwrap, and put in microwave for 20 seconds. Stir in a full tablespoon of garlic powder. Make sure you work it into the cream cheese so that it's all garlic flavored.
- Rinse your jalapenos, cut top stem off, then cut in half lengthwise. Use your knife to de-vein and de-seed the jalapeno. The vein, which is the lighter colored inside part where the seeds are, is what makes the peppers hot. The more vein you leave, the hotter the finished product. To get the mildest flavor, take a spoon and scrape the vein to leave just the darker inside. This sounds time consuming, but it goes very quickly.*Hint if you have some kitchen gloves or plastic gloves, you may want to put them on. If the peppers are really hot, even after washing your hands, the heat remains on your fingers, and can burn your eyes or any other sensitive places you touch. If you don't have gloves, use a spoon for the de-veining and de-seeding, and try to handle the inside of the pepper as little as possible, while washing hands thoroughly and quickly after finishing.
- Preheat oven to 425.
- I promise that this cream cheese stuffed jalapenos recipe is worth it! Keep going...
- The easiest way to fill the peppers with the cream cheese is to put the cream cheese garlic mixture into a quart sized FREEZER ziploc bag and cut a small corner off (about 1/4 inch) Fill them full but not overflowing because the mixture expands as it cooks.
- Take the half slices of bacon and wrap around the stuffed pepper. I like to wrap end-middle-end around it, but you can wrap around the middle and double over holding the bacon together with a toothpick.
- Place these on a cookie sheet and cook until bacon is done and cream cheese mixture may be getting a little brown. About 10 minutes, but I like to look in on them as they're cooking to make sure they're not over or undercooked.
