Category: Appetizer

Recipes for appetizers and snacks.

Categories
Appetizer Main Dish Snack

Pizza sticks will make you say, ‘Yes, cheese!’

Cheesy pizza sticks are great for a quick snack an especially good recipe for beginning cooks to try their hand in the kitchen.
Cheesy pizza sticks are great for a quick snack an especially good recipe for beginning cooks to try their hand in the kitchen.

While my sister was still pregnant with my now almost 1-1/2-year-old niece, I noticed my shopping habits change.

I was constantly picking up this cute outfit or that cool toy even before our beautiful Emi graced us with her presence.

My only problem has been patience, as I always seem to find toys or outfits that she’s not quite ready for yet.

The other day, it was a child’s apron and baker’s hat. It was adorable, and I nearly shoved it into my cart before I thought through the fact that (1) this outfit was clearly made for someone more the size of a five-year-old and (2) my niece, while smart and sassy, is just now completely conquering solid foods and probably isn’t quite ready to help prepare them with me yet.

That being said, I have, on occasion, gotten to cook with kids over the years, and it’s always fun to watch them learn a life skill and enjoy their creations afterwards.

The recipe I found this week on the blog “I Wash, You Dry” is one I’ll be setting aside for Emi and I to try out when she’s a little older. It’s so simple there isn’t much to adjust, but I decided to change up the spices a bit. You can find the original post at https://iwashyoudry.com/cheesy-pepperoni-pizza-sticks/.

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Cheesy Pizza Sticks

Cheesy pizza sticks are great for a quick snack an especially good recipe for beginning cooks to try their hand in the kitchen.
Course Appetizer, Main Course, Snack
Keyword cheese, kid-friendly, pepperoni, pizza

Ingredients

  • 1 tube refrigerated pizza dough
  • 40 slices pepperoni I used turkey pepperoni
  • 10 mozzarella cheese sticks
  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine melted
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
  • 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
  • Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with tinfoil and spraying it with cooking spray.
  • Unroll the pizza dough onto the baking sheet (don’t worry about trying to roll it out thinner at this point, just get it flat).
  • Cut the dough into 10 equal rectangles.
  • Place four pepperoni slices and one cheese stick on each rectangle, and then pinch the dough to seal it around the cheese and meat.
  • Lay the pizza sticks, seam side down, about an inch apart on the baking sheet.
  • In a small bowl, combine the melted butter and the oregano, basil, parsley and garlic powder.
  • Brush it onto each pizza stick. (I used a spoon to get the remaining goodies out of the bottom of the bowl and spread them out, too.)
  • Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the dough is golden brown on top.
  • Let the pizza sticks rest for at least 10 minutes before digging in.

I didn’t have a kiddo to share these with, but the adults who sampled them deemed them a success. They’d be great with some marinara dipping sauce, too.

They did have quite a bit of cheese spill out of them, which was OK in my book, since I love some slightly browned, melted cheese, but that also made me very glad I used aluminum foil to make clean up a breeze.

As summer is approaching and some of you are looking for good recipes to try out with the kids in your lives, I’d recommend this one.

And if you need a good lead on a kid-sized apron, let me know. I’ve got you covered.

This piece first appeared in print on April 11, 2019.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Appetizer Main Dish Side Dish Snack

You can’t just wing crispy chicken

Cooking nice, crispy chicken wings in the oven takes some time but is well worth the wait.
Cooking nice, crispy chicken wings in the oven takes some time but is well worth the wait.

Although we had big crowds of folks in our house for the NFL playoff games this season, Super Bowl Sunday was a calm evening without company—something Joey and I were both very much in the mood for after a few busy weeks in a row.

Despite the lack of a table full of food, I still decided to make a traditional football snack for the big game: buffalo wings.

Buffalo wings are one of Joey’s favorite foods, and we’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to figure out how to make some at home that are crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside and aren’t the product of lots of deep frying.

In all our attempts, we generally only attained one or two of those criteria, but I finally figured it out this past weekend, thanks to a blog post by “The Cookful.” You can find it at https://thecookful.com/bake-chicken-wings-crispy/. I will warn you that it takes a good amount of time in the oven to accomplish this, but it is mostly hands-off time, and it’s well worth the wait.

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Crispy Chicken Wings

Cooking nice, crispy chicken wings in the oven takes some time but is well worth the wait.
Course Appetizer, Main Course, Snacks
Keyword chicken wings

Ingredients

  • 20 wing pieces
  • 1 tablespoon aluminum-free baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • sauce or dry rub

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.
  • Line two rimmed baking sheets with foil and place a rack onto the sheet (I just used my cooling racks).
  • Place the wing pieces into a bowl and dump in the baking powder and salt. Mix them with your hands to distribute the powder and salt. (Don’t expect them to look like they’ve been dipped in flour; you won’t be able to see the coating on the wings when you’re done.)
  • Place the wing pieces in a single layer on the rack, spacing them just slightly. Cook them for 30 minutes.
  • Increase the oven temperature to 425 degrees, and cook for another 45 to 50 minutes or until the wings are brown and crispy.
  • Let them rest for a couple minutes, and then toss them in your favorite wing sauce or dry rub and serve immediately.

My favorite way to coat wings is to put them in a bowl with a lid along with the sauce and then just shake them until they’re coated. I’m not coordinated enough to do it without a lid—unless I want to clean sauce off every inch of my kitchen.

These wings were awesome—exactly what we’d been looking for. It was also nice that any fat dripped down onto the foil, and the wings weren’t swimming in it while they cooked.

I’m not sure what the secret of the baking powder is that makes the wings cook so well, but it was just what I was missing in previous attempts.

They also received the Joey stamp of approval, which is a pretty big deal. He has pretty high standards for what makes for a good wing.

Our Super Bowl snack was awesome. The game, on the other hand, well…maybe it could have used some baking powder.

This piece first appeared in print on Feb. 7, 2019.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Appetizer Snack

Garlic cheese bombs explode with flavor

An easy snack for the Super Bowl or any get together is garlic cheese bombs.
An easy snack for the Super Bowl or any get together is garlic cheese bombs.

With the Super Bowl right around the corner, I decided I better try out a new snack recipe. That’s especially since I’m likely to be craving something to eat while I grumpily watch the Patriots try to win yet another trophy.

I was really hoping to see two teams who’d never won the big game make it into the Super Bowl this year, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

I don’t like it, but I guess I’m an Eagles fan for the end of this year’s NFL season. The Chiefs have to not disappoint me one of these years, right? Right?

Well, the good news is I found a super easy recipe to try out on Super Bowl Sunday, so at least the food will be worth cheering for.

I found this recipe on the blog “Crunchy Creamy Sweet.” You can see the original at http://www.crunchycreamysweet.com/2015/12/11/easy-garlic-cheese-bombs-recipe/2/. I decreased the amount of butter a decent amount in my version and adjusted the amounts of some of the other ingredients, too.

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Garlic Cheese Bombs

An easy snack for the Super Bowl or any get together is garlic cheese bombs.
Course Appetizer, Snacks
Keyword canned biscuits, cheese, football snack, garlic, snack table

Ingredients

  • 1 tube eight biscuits
  • 8 ounce block mozzarella cheese
  • 5 tablespoons butter melted
  • 2 teaspoons dry ranch seasoning mix
  • 3 teaspoons minced garlic or 2 teaspoons garlic powder

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and prep a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil for easier cleanup.
  • Cut each of the biscuits in half, and cut the block of cheese into 16 equal pieces.
  • Stir the ranch mix and garlic into the melted butter.
  • Flatten each biscuit half out with your palm and wrap each around a block of cheese, being careful to really seal off the seams as much as possible.
  • Place the dough onto the prepared baking sheet a couple inches apart.
  • Brush the butter mixture onto each (use a spoon to get some minced garlic on top of each, if your brush isn’t picking it up), and bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until the dough is browned on top.
  • Let cool for a few minutes before serving.

These were good on their own but would also be great with marinara sauce on the side. Mine did explode quite a bit in the oven, but I’m also a big fan of toasty cheese, so I was not disappointed.

I suspect they didn’t hold together either because I didn’t seal my seams as well as I should have or I left them in a bit long (I used the whole 15 minutes), so if you really don’t want them to make a mess, I’d recommend really watching them around the 12-minute mark, and you might just decrease the amount of cheese you put in each one so you can seal them even more securely.

Hopefully this year’s Super Bowl will still be an entertaining game, but even if it isn’t, we’ll have plenty of snacks to drown our sorrows before we work on getting our hopes up for next year.

This piece first appeared in print on Jan. 25, 2018.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

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