Baked. Brie. Bites.

 

 

Baked. Brie. Bites. Baked... Brie... Bites. I love all of these words individually, but really like when

they all come together in one thing. For just about any recipe, I like to have the end results always outweigh the amount of effort I've put in. And sometimes complicated doesn't always equal delicious.

Complicated ≠ Delicious

This recipe takes 10-15 minutes to assemble and roughly the same time to bake.. and they are always the first things to disappear on an appetizer tray.

I found this on Pinterest, of course. And the link takes you to a blog post by a food blogger called Plain Chicken. The post was a review of cheeses they'd gotten and within it was the original recipe for Baked Brie Bites. I've made this for three parties in the last year and have modified it because I will do anything to make something awesome easier, quicker, and faster.




Sometimes Basic Ingredients are the best!

Ingredients:
-Mini fillo shells
-Brie Cheese- whatever you can find, cheap/expensive, rined/unrinded
-Brown sugar
-Chopped pecans
-Honey









See how clean!

The mini fillo shells already come in this great plastic tray, so I just do all the assembly with the shells in their tray. I find it makes clean up easier as any spilled ingredients are in the tray that you are going throw away, anyways.

Now, like in all things, you have choices. This is one of those moments. You can choose to keep the rind on your brie or remove it. I'm in the removing it camp, but some people like their rind. To them, its part of their taste association. And, lets be honest, I'll eat brie anyway I can get it... but, for my preference, I de-rinded that sucker. Then you cut the brie into cubes and fill the fillo shell with as much cheese as you like. Since the cheese will melt later, it will fill in the bottom of your shell nicely.




The next few steps are just about applying your toppings The recipe suggests that you apply 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of brown sugar to each cup. Unless its new, my brown sugar is almost always hard to some degree. And in the past, I've gotten brown sugar chunks all over the place in this "application" process.

I discovered my next trick by accident. I put about a cup of brown sugar into a ramiken covered by a wet papertowel in the microwave for 45 seconds to soften it so I could distribute with a teaspoon. The moisture from the papertowel not only softened my brown sugar, but it melted it all together... which turned out to be a great thing as now I could apply the brown sugar in a more controlled way by drizzling it over the bites. Be careful with melted sugars and caramels... because, if you didn't know, they have a surface temperature hotter than the sun.

But, the clean up benefits of this step outweigh the mess of distributing sugar crystals to 32 individual cups. See the below side-by-side comparison. The left side is the melted version with the right side being dry, brown sugar.

Side by Side comparison! Boom. You've been scienced.

Next you apply the chopped pecans. I guess you could use any nut of choice but I'm a sucker for pecans. Just like the brown sugar, you just evenly distribute the chopped pecans onto your bites. I gently push them into the soft cheese so they dont fall off or move in transit. And once you apply your pecans, you just lightly drizzle the entire bite with the freshest honey you can find.

 

 

 

Before!

Then place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and transfer shells to cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes... I try and keep an eye on these just to make sure they don't get too burney.
Then place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and transfer shells to cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes... I try and keep an eye on these just to make sure they don't get too burney.

After they've cooked, let them cool for a minute, but these are best soon out of the oven. Dont get me wrong, they are almost as good a few hours later... but like most melty things, they are best at their peak meltiness.

Remove from the parchment paper, plate them to your liking, and watch 'em fly.





After!

 

                                                                  Thanks for reading!~ Leigh