Cream Cheese & Pepper Jelly Puff Pastries

I don’t talk about appetizers enough with you guys.

You see, I really love appetizers, and I really love you for being here.  I really love to serve appetizers to people whose company I enjoy. So, I should basically be serving you virtual appetizers every time we talk.

But then I’d be a one trick pony (a one trick hidden pony? Oh, I die ;)) and nobody wants that.

For today though, appetizers.  Because I really do love you.  And these are SO easy to make, self-contained and therefore easy to serve and eat, and so deliciously poppable.

I was scared of puff pastry for a long time, until, with Chelsea at my side, I made homemade sausage rolls.  I’ve been hooked ever since.  If you’ve never tried puff pastry, it’s such a fun thing – you start with cold, flat dough (that’s actually layers of dough with butter in between all tightly pressed together) and when it bakes it rises into a puffed, flaky masterpiece.  It’s so much more flexible and forgiving than I’d anticipated, and these are my favourite last-minute appetizer or, in this case, way to use up a bit of leftover puff pastry dough from my Beef Wellington.

This is so easy it hardly counts as a recipe – cut your puff pastry into small rounds or squares (depending if you want the circle shape pictured or cute triangles), top it with a hefty scoop of cream cheese and a dollop of red pepper jelly, homemade or otherwise, and bake until golden and crispy! Cheesy, gooey, salty-sweet-with-a-hint-of-heat appetizer bites, at your service.

Enjoy!