Jalapeno Popper Grilled Cheese Sandwich {Crazy Cooking Challenge}

For a couple of months now, I’ve been wanting to join Crazy Cooking Challenge, a link party hosted by Tina over at Moms Crazy Cooking where the participants find a recipe on another blog (cannot be a professional blog, so no Pioneer Woman or Taste of Home) that matches that month’s theme, adapt and prepare the recipe and post it on their own blogs.  Unfortunately, something always seemed to keep me from making the deadline. Luckily for me, Tina is quite forgiving and allowed me to stay in the group and participate in this month’s challenge.  Imagine my happiness when she announced that this month’s challenge was – wait for it – GRILLED CHEESE!  And although a thousand thoughts swarmed my head (and tummy!) about what grilled cheese I’d like to make, there really was only one answer: a Jalapeno Popper Grilled Cheese.

I’d seen many versions of a JPGC on the internet in previous months but one really stood out to me and that’s the JPGC made by Kevin over at Closet Cooking.  I’ve been a fan of Kevin’s for a while; his photos are fantastic, he blogs almost daily and all of recipes are quite interesting.   Please do drop by his blog and poke around, you’ll be happy you did so!

My tweaks?  Well, in addition to using homemade bread (so EASY!), I used a lower fat cream cheese to make it, umm, yeah, healthy.  Additionally, I diced the peppers and added them to the cream cheese rather than leaving them whole and placing a layer of peppers on the sandwich.  I was afraid that biting into a solid layer of pepper would result in said layer of pepper coming out in one bite.  Plus, and I think most importantly, I added BACON.  And as we all know, bacon makes everything better!  

Jalapeno Popper Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Adapted from ClosetCooking Jalapeno Popper Grilled Cheese

Serves 2

Ingredients:

4 slices of thick, hearty and crusty bread, such as sourdough or the No Knead Bread I made and used

4oz Neufchâtel cream cheese, at room temperature (that’s half of one box)

4 medium-sized jalapenos

2 slices sharp cheddar cheese

4 slices of bacon, cooked to your liking (I like mine SUPER crisp)

Butter

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°.

Place whole peppers on a foil-lined baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes.  LEAVE THE OVEN DOOR CRACKED! These are killer fumes and we don’t want them building up in the oven, waiting to smack us in the face when we open the door!

Place cooked peppers into a brown paper or plastic bag and seal.  Let the peppers steam for about 15 minutes.  Remove peppers and peel the skins from the peppers and discard.  Cut tops off peppers (mine usually just pull off) and slice down the middle, opening the pepper and exposing the seeds and ribs.  With a sharp knife, scrape the seeds and ribs from the inside of the pepper and discard.  Dice peppers and add to a small bowl with the softened cream cheese.  Stir to combine.

Butter one side of each piece of bread and place unbuttered side down on a hot griddle.  Toast unbuttered side until lightly brown, you just want warm it up, not get it golden brown.

Turn bread over so that the buttered side is now touching the hot griddle.  Place one slice of cheddar cheese on a slice of bread for each sandwich and top cheddar with two slices of bacon.  Spread other slice of bread with cream cheese/jalapeno mixture and place cream cheesed bread on top of the bacon to close the sandwich.  Continue to cook, depending on your griddle’s heat and cook times, flipping the sandwich once to griddle the other side.

**Notes:  Once I turn the sandwich over, I let it cook for another couple of minutes and then I turn the heat off and cover the sandwich (while still on the griddle) with a long handled pot and let the sandwich sit for about 3 minutes.   This allows all the little goodies on the sandwich to get happy with each other and the cheese to fully melt without having to overcook the bread.

To cool, I place the sandwich on a wire rack and let cool for 5 minutes.  This keeps the bread from sweating and becoming moist as it would when cooled on a plate.  The cooling off period, to me, is crucial.  It lets the gooey things calm down a little bit so they ooze in your mouth and not out of the sandwich and on to the plate!

If it's not too much trouble, please scroll down to the thumbnails below and click on my recipe, #33.  In this cooking challenge, every click gets me closer to winning!! MUAH!