
Spicy Cheese Phyllo Appetizers are very easy and tasty, and have lots of yummy variations worth trying. Just a few ingredients make an elegant treat.
Spicy Cheese Phyllo Appetizers are very simple, very tasty, and easy to overdose on. But this particular recipe was more than me giving you a good recipe to try. It started out that way, but then I started doing more and more experimenting. I used 2 different types of cheeses and several spreads, chiles, or sauces.
This initially started out with just 2 ingredients: cheese and phyllo dough. But not just any cheese – I was in the Safeway deli cheese section where they have gourmet cheeses, and they had Dietz & Watson sliced Jalapeno & Cayenne Pepper Cheddar for half price. It’s like pepper jack, but about 4-5 times hotter and it’s cheddar instead of jack cheese. Wow! Plain old pepper jack is for wimps – this packs some real heat & flavor. I tried 1 piece of this cheese wrapped in phyllo; not enough cheese there. It was sort of like a spicy cheese flavored phyllo cracker. 2 layers of cheese was much better. Well, sweet and hot go great together; and so does sweet and cheese. I happened to have a jar of Stonewall Kitchen Maple Bacon Onion Jam – sounds like a good match, right? All I did to make these was spread a layer of this jam between 2 slices of the Jalapeno & Cayenne Pepper Cheddar and wrap it in about a half dozen layers of phyllo, then bake for about 10 minutes. Brain-dead simple. That jam was the kicker – you can really taste the bacon flavor and it has the perfect level of sweetness. Can’t say I could taste the maple or onion. Stonewall Kitchen has 59 jams and jellies, and 3 of them have bacon. (How about trying the Bourbon Bacon Jam in this recipe?) 93 stores in Colorado carry Stonewall Kitchen products, including many Safeways. You can find a store at stonewallkitchen.com/wheretobuy.
I also made variations of this with a top quality muenster, green chiles, and other jams. They were all really good, but it’s that Jalapeno & Cayenne Pepper Cheddar and Maple Bacon Onion Jam combo that was truly memorable.
- 1 16 oz package frozen phyllo dough
- ½ lb sliced Dietz & Watson Jalapeno & Cayenne Pepper Cheddar
- ½ cup Stonewall Kitchen Maple Bacon Onion Jam (or other jam)
- Butter flavored cooking spray
- Thaw the phyllo dough. Set a nonstick cookie sheet aside for baking.
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Unroll the phyllo dough. Cut into strips along the length of the phyllo rectangle; the width of each strip will be the length of each appetizer. In the photo, these were 4 inches long; so the phyllo strips were 4 inches wide.
- Cut the cheese slices into pieces about ¾ inch wide and 3 inches long; they should be about ¾ in shorter than the width of your phyllo strips. The cheese will melt and spread some; so you want to allow for this. Each appetizer will use 2 pieces of cheese, the same size.
- Lightly spray the phyllo with the cooking spray.
- Place a piece of cheese at one end of a phyllo strip. Spread a layer of jam on it, then top it with a second piece of cheese.
- Using 2 layers of phyllo, start rolling the cheese up to the midpoint; then cut and put the appetizer on the cookie sheet. Continue until cookie sheet is full, placing them about ½ inch apart. Lightly spray with cooking spray.
- Bake about 10 minutes or until they are turning light brown.
- While the first cookie sheet is baking, prepare the next cookie sheet.
- Cook and serve. Keeps well for several days.
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