They’re a delicious holiday appetizer
For me, pepper puffs with bacon are an annual thing. Every year before Christmas I’ll make a batch and freeze them. If you have guests dropping in over the holidays you can easily bake some off. On the other hand they’re a nice appetizer to take to a pot luck or gathering. You’ll need access to an oven though.
Peppers, bacon and cream cheese on puff pastry
They are warm freshly baked golden squares of buttery puff pastry topped with finely chopped bell peppers and bacon. Finished with a topping of melted herb cream cheese. Delicate, flaky and be careful ’cause that cream cheese is hot. Give them second to cool off before stuffing one in your mouth. You can buy the cream cheese pre-flavoured or if you like, try our herb cream cheese with garlic. It’s very easy to add your own herbs to plain cream cheese. The best part is you have full control over the end result.
Can I freeze them?
If you want to freeze them, go ahead and assemble them as you normally would. Instead of baking them off, put them on a flat tray and freeze. Once frozen, put them in an appropriate sealed container and leave in the freezer. Even with the chopped peppers and bacon, you can safely freeze them for 12 months. I would try and cook them off sooner than that though. When you’re ready, bake them from frozen for approx. 15 minutes. Add a dollop of cream cheese to each one and bake for another 3 minutes.
Pepper Puffs with Bacon
Ingredients
- ½ pkg frozen puff pastry thawed (1 sheet)
- ½ tbsp olive oil
- 3 slices bacon fat removed
- ½ red bell pepper finely chopped
- ½ green bell pepper finely chopped
- 3 tbsp red onion finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic grated
- salt & pepper to taste
- 2 tsp fresh parsley chopped
Instructions
- Remove as much fat from the bacon as possible and chop into small pieces. In a large frying pan, add olive oil and cook bacon over medium heat until just starting to brown. Add peppers, onions, garlic, salt and pepper. Cook until softened. Stir in parsley, set aside and allow the mixture to cool.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll the puff pastry sheet out to a 10″x12″ rectangle. For easier handling freeze for 10-15 minutes on a lined baking sheet.
- If necessary trim any rough edges of the pastry. Cut the sheets into 2″ squares. Poke each square with a fork in a few locations.
- Put a generous teaspoon of the pepper/bacon mixture on each square. Bake at 350℉ for approx. 15 minutes. They should be golden brown.Remove from the oven and top each square with ½ a tsp of cream cheese. Bake for an additional 3 minutes.
Notes
Fresh out of the oven.
So they might be a little fiddly to put together, with the fine chopping and such. They’re not near as difficult as some appetizers. I like the part that I can make them in advance and they always taste like they are oven fresh. I guess thats because they are.
More appetizers
[foogallery id=”4273″]
