Stuffed Hot and Yummy Goodness!

What's a cookout without a few good appetizers? Well, it's not nearly as good a cookout! Spicy is one of my all time favorite flavors. Is spicy a flavor? It is now! If it's a spicy food, I probably like. So it's only natural that would be a connoisseur of stuffed jalapenos. I've never been a fan of the ones only stuffed with cheeses, but cheese is a critical ingredient in the stuffing of peppers! I love when they're stuffed with some sort of meat or bread stuffing or something similar.

So early in the morning on the 4th of July, I had an idea - Stuffed Jalapenos, Poppers, whatever we call them these days!!! So, how to do it dairy-free so that I could enjoy them too? Dairy-free cream cheese. But I was crazy scared that tofu based cream cheese would be crazy gross, so mixing other flavors in was a must!

Here's what I had on hand -

So I sliced the jalapenos in half, scraped the seeds and ribs out using that handy dandy tool in the photo above. I think it's meant to destem strawberries and it's made by The Pampered Chef, but it's a great jalapeno pepper innard-cleaner!

I mixed the whole tub of fake cream cheese, 8 oz of lump crab meat, about 1 cup (although I didn't measure it) of plain unseasoned bread crumbs and about 2-3 tablespoons of Old Bay. I used this mixture to fill the pepper halves then baked them at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

And VOILA! They were great - fake cream cheese and all! I will make these again, that's for certain. Next time I may stuff the peppers whole from the tops and put them on the grill....wrapped in bacon, of course, because everything is better with bacon!