A Success and a Fail, All in One Day

This is my first time blogging about food, due to one basic reason. If you follow the recipe, it tastes like it should. No reason to share what has already been shared. Usually.

Growing up, I wasn't really into cooking. Sure, I liked to experiment like any kid, but being a picky eater meant that my ideal dinner was bowtie pasta with parmesan cheese. Well honestly, that's still my ideal meal... But my pickiness has subsided exponentially, and I enjoy attempting to recreate the concoctions that other people have perfected and shared.

I have made some great creations in the last few months, crescent roll burgers, pineapple chicken, peanut butter bars..I tend to stick to the ones with the least amount of ingredients, not for the ease of it, but so that I have to buy less things.

That being said, I decided to try two different things today, one meal and one snack. One, I changed some things on the recipe, and it turned out deliciously. The other, I did exactly according to the recipe, and it..failed. Not a complete fail, but enough of one.

First the failure.
Here is the recipe:
http://www.justaddasliceoflove.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/baked-cheese-balls.html

So the most important thing in the recipe is the mozzarella cheese sticks. Well I went shopping for them, and apparently, they do not exist in the UK. No mozzarella cheese sticks. Just cheese sticks. They don't even tell you what kind of cheese it is. I suppose some sort of cheddar collaboration, due to the yellow color. Ok, I said I didn't change anything about the recipe, but I guess I did, seeing I had a different kind of stick. Sorry.

Other than the issue with the type of cheese, I followed the instructions perfectly. Dip in milk, roll in breadcrumbs, bake.

What happened?

The cheese melted.

Most definitely not the picturesque snack from the blog. Apparently the cheese did not want to stay inside it's bread crumb home.

I'm thinking, ok maybe more breadcrumbs would make it stay.. but the bread crumbs wouldn't stick to the cheese because they were attempting to hold on with milk. Milk? What kind of glue is that?

Of course I still ate them. And the taste was nice. But while it was ok for me, home alone, scraping cheese off the foil, I hardly think the nibbles would be good for company.

Cooking attempt #2 worked a lot better, despite some changes.
Recipe: http://blogchef.net/bacon-wrapped-chicken-recipe/

I used plain, fat free cream cheese (I hate onions. I can deal with them in some dishes, but if it can be avoided, I do). I sprinkled some rosemary and thyme on for a little more flavor.

The big change? I used turkey breast instead of chicken. We bought it just for a little bit of variety, and because it happened to be cheaper at the store we went to. I love using ground turkey instead of ground beef in dishes, because of the health pluses. I wasn't sure that would work as well as substituting turkey for chicken, but I figure it was worth a try. Fairly certain it tasted exactly the same as it would have with the chicken.

Again, I followed the directions. I used British bacon, which happens to be twice the size of ours. This was nice because I didn't have to worry about the toothpick- it wrapped it self up.

This was absolutely delicious. I was too impatient to worry about making the bacon crispy, but it still tasted great. It isn't an overwhelming bacon taste, but instead perfectly matched. This will be cooked again soon!