Stuffed Sweet Mini Peppers

The idea here is like jalapeno poppers, but with sweet mini peppers instead of hot peppers. And instead of breading and frying, these are served uncooked and cold.

They're a little lighter and fresher. and they're also milder - the only slightly spicy bit is the garnish. The sweet flavor of the peppers shines through, and the cheese plays a starring role.

Speaking of the garnish, the Piment d'Espelette is my new favorite paprika. Instead of a fine grind, it's tiny flakes, and it's a little spicy.

Stuffed Sweet Mini Peppers

2 ounces blue cheese
2 ounces Monterrey Jack cheese
4 ounces cream cheese
1 tablespoon Frieda's tomato pesto
Piment d'Espelette for garnish
Mini sweet peppers, as needed

Combine the cheeses and pesto in the bowl of your food processor. Pulse, then process until the mixture is mostly smooth. It's fine if there are tiny bits of the Monterrey Jack and the pesto, but you don't want large chunks.

If you don't have the tomato pesto, sundried tomato would be fine. Or, omit it.

Cut the peppers in half, lengthwise, then remove the stem and seeds.

Fill the peppers with the cheese mixture, then garnish each with a sprinkle of the Piment or with paprika, as desired.

Serve chilled or at room temperature.

This makes about a cup of filling and fills about a dozen peppers, depending on how big your mini peppers are, and how full you fill them.

I received the mini peppers and the tomato pesto from Frieda's Specialty Produce at no cost. I was not required to write about them.

Cookistry Went After-Christmas Shopping - and this is what happened

I'm probably not the average shopper. Okay, I'm not normal. But we knew that.

Normal folks stock up on bargain wrapping paper, Christmas cards, and maybe some deals on lights, ornaments, candles, and decorative stuff.

Me, I go to the grocery store and see what deals I can score. And sometimes the items that go on sale aren't all that seasonal. Like chocolate chips. Seriously. Chocolate chips.

I also picked up some extra cupcake liners. Gee, the red ones will be great for Valentine's day and the green ones will be perfect for St. Patrick's day.

Speaking of red and green, in one of the stores there was a huuuge display of Duncan Hines "velvets" cake mix. It included two mixes - a red and a green. I usually don't buy cake mix, but I had some decorating tools I wanted to play with, and a two-toned cake mix sounded perfect for my evil plans. So I bought that.

And some other stuff.

And then I made cupcakes.

The first thing I wanted to fiddle with was the arrangement of the two batter colors. I tried several techniques:

I layered some of the cupcakes. It was simple and didn't require any extra tools, but to make it a little simpler for all of the cupcakes, I used two pastry bags to fill the cups - one pastry bag for each color of batter.

I used a cupcake batter divider from Good Cook to create cupcakes where the colors were split vertically. The divider stood upright on its own in the cupcake pan, so it was pretty easy to use.

Since these little dividers are cheap (particularly if you buy them on sale after Christmas, as I did) I'd suggest buying three or four of them so you can fill a row at a time of cupcakes, so you don't need to switch colors constantly. It wasn't horrible to fill one side, then the other, then move the divider to the next cupcake, but it would have been quicker to fill four red sides, then four green sides, then move all four dividers to the next row.

I used that same cupcake divider in a different way, too. Instead of removing it straight up, I twisted it to create a swirl pattern.

I used a small-diameter biscuit cutter to make cupcakes with one color in the center and a different color around the outside. It was a little fiddly to fill the inside if the biscuit cutter, since it had a handle on top, but it wasn't awful.

It was a little tough to gauge how much batter I had, and quite a bit stuck to the biscuit cutter, so I added extra batter to the tops of some of those cupcakes.

And last, I added red and green batter to the last few cupcakes and used a chopstick to swirl the batter. This was the simplest of all, but it's a pretty common technique.

Rather than using pastry bags, I think it would have been less messy and more precise to use squeeze bottles to dispense the batter. Maybe I'll give that a try next time. But they'd have to be squeeze bottle with a fairly large hole, or it would take forever to fill the cupcake cups. A decorating squeeze bottle with a large tip would probably make sense.

For the frosting, I pulled out another gadget - a pastry bag and coupler that I bought from King Arthur Flour that allows two different frostings to be piped at the same time through the same tip.

It took a few attempts before I figured out the best way to use it. For instance, you want to fill both sides equally, and the best way to do that is to put a little frosting in one side, then some in the other, alternating back and forth to fill both sides with about the same amount of frosting.

Once I figured that out, it worked pretty well.

Now that I think about it, it might have been interesting to use that to pipe the two batters into the cupcakes ... maybe next time.

So ... did you get an interesting food-related bargains after the holiday? Tell me!

Top Ten ... er, Baker's Dozen

Not a top-ten post, but this photo amuses me.

Yeah, everyone's doing TOP TEN posts, and I figured I might as well jump on the bandwagon.
So, with no further ado (except a really big "Happy New Year" to you), here's my top-ten (ish) pick of blog posts from 2013 (and beyond). Not necessarily top ten in traffic, but top ten in ... something.

First, traffic. Although it was published in January of 2011, this post about the correct water temperature for yeast consistently ranks in the top ten of my posts almost every week, thanks to its high ranking in Google searches. At one point, there was a link to it in a school curriculum. It's been steadily climbing above other popular posts, like my Bunny Bread and a biscuit recipe.

Then, Wikipedia. Okay, this post about annato oil is another one, but it's one that's mentioned as a reference in this article on Wikipedia so I'm rather fond if it. I'm sure there are plenty of blog posts about annato oil on the web, but for some reason this one from 2010 was chosen as a reference. I don't get a lot of traffic from being mentioned as a resource, but it's kind of cool, anyway.

Magic Cake is magic.

Peanut Butter Cup Magic Cake was a high-traffic post from 2013. It's one of the few times I've jumped on a trendy bandwagon, and the only time I bandwagoned fast enough to get any traction from it. I still haven't made cake pops, and I might never jump onboard that one.

Chicken breast stuffed with rice and broccoli might not sound all that interesting, but I loved the photos I took. It was a cold day and the hot food next to the window where I shoot photos created a wisp of steam. In the early days of this blog, I was lucky to get photos in focus and with correct color. Now I'm getting wisps of steam.

When the idea of the Turham struck, I was giddy excited about it. I sort of expected it to go viral or at least get crazy on Pinterest, but it remained an average-viewed post on my blog. But you never know - this could be one that goes crazy next year. Meanwhile, I can say that I may have coined a new word. A search on Google didn't turn up any similar food monstrosities.

I baked a chocolate cake for my BFF Carla's birthday, and my husband raved about it. THIS is the birthday cake he dreamed of. I guess I'll be making it again.

Amy had a wicked sense of humor.

I haven't used any guest posts since my husband got out of the hospital (back then, I used a LOT of guest posts because I just couldn't manage ... but that's another story), but I did use someone else's recipe on this post. My friend Amy had just passed away and I posted one of her recipes and photos as a tribute. I still miss her quirky humor on Facebook.

Speaking of my husband, in this post from late January, I announced the countdown to his arrival at home, after five months in three different hospitals. It's still emotional for me...

In July, I announced that I had signed a deal to write a cookbook. I thought I wouldn't be able to keep up with daily posts on my blog, and I wanted to let people know why I was slacking. Turns out that I did manage to post most days, missing just a few days and ending the year with 355 posts. Not too shabby.

Tweedle-ee-deedle-ee-dee!

I loved-loved-loved these little cinnamon birdhouse cookies. I used a mini gingerbread house cookie cutter and adapted it to look like a birdhouse. The cookie cutter came from Good Cook, a company that I had been previously aware of as a grocery-store brand of gadgets and bakeware. But then I started doing a few sponsored posts for Good Cook and pretty soon I became friends with the company's media guru.

So ... that's ten noteworthy posts ... but ... but ... I'm a baker, so I feel inclined to give you a baker's dozen.

There was a time when everyone was talking about the book Herbivoracious, and I had to see what all the fervor was about. This grilled cheese sandwich is a prime example of the genius in these pages. Simple, but amazing.

And then I threw caution to the wind and made pressure-fried chicken. A lot of people thought I was crazy, but it worked. And the chicken was fabulous.

When Crown Maple Whisky ads were running on the radio, I became obsessed with finding it. But ... it was nowhere. For months. When I finally got my hands on a bottle, I made Maple Whisky Ice Cream. It's one of my all-time favorite ice creams that I've made. And I'm still obsessed with the whisky. Only now it's a lot easier to buy.

So that's it for post, but I want to leave you with one final photo ... Snickers, all dressed up in her Christmas finery. Heh. 

Have a GREAT 2014!