Baked Jalapenos Poppers With Cream Cheese and Bacon With Easy Garnish Idea

1. Remove seeds and membranes from peppers with a spoon or melon baller.

Don’t wash peppers after removing seeds, remove all seeds manually. If you will wash, you wash out all pleasant nice heat completely from peppers.

2. Blanch peppers for 2 minutes. (Place in boiling water and boil. Don’t boil too many at the same time because not easy to manage and overcook.) Like spicy, add to water seeds as you want.

When I skiped this step, my family didn’t notice a big difference. However, skin is softer after parboiling and more pleasant to eat. So it is up to you do it or skip but I included this step in the recipe.

3. Shred cheese. Mix cream cheese and Colby Jack cheese with a fork.

Cold cream cheese will be not easy to mix up with cheese if it is cold. Unwrap and place on a microwaveable plate cream cheese. Microwave on high 10 seconds. The cream cheese will be much easier to mix with cheese. Works every time!

4. Add a pinch of garlic powder. Taste the cheese mixture, if you need add salt to taste.

5. Place on a wire rack stuffed peppers and add bacon on top. Add a small piece of bacon to each pepper or wrapped in bacon. (I just tried to wrap peppers in precooked bacon and much better result! Not much grease and we still have bacon flavor. Time to bake 25-30 minutes)

*Great price for the precooked bacon at Sam’s Club, if you have this store around!

If you don’t have a wired rack, you can make ropes from foil and place under peppers, so pepper has space on the bottom for air circulation.

6. Bake 40 minutes at 400ºF or how you like your bacon to be done.

*If using precooked bacon, time 25-30 minutes.

Bacon and pepper roses are so cute garnish and easy to make! Cut the bottom of a jalapeno pepper with zigzag like on the photo. So simple to make just roll up a slice of turkey bacon or pork bacon (watch video). If you make the top of roses from turkey bacon bake for 20 minutes. It takes much less time than stuffed peppers. If you are going to make from pork bacon, pork bacon buds I cook the same time as the pepper.

The bottom of roses I tried blanch and bake with stuffed peppers together in the oven. Personally, I like more just blanch for garnish peppers because looks much better than fully cooked.

      Not every turkey bacon works well to make bacon roses, some not flexible enough and brokes so easy. Everything depends on the brand you are going to use.

On the photo baked rose, it stays well together and perfectly edible if someone wants to eat it!

Another way to make petals, in my opinion, much easier to make pretty flower this way. Just make petals on one side of slice bacon and roll it up. I used fondant cutter for cakes to make even petals, but it is easy to make with just a knife.

Place roses with stuffed peppers and bake 20 minutes. Just remember they don’t take long like stuffed peppers.

In the photo below, are peppers I made for the party at my husband’s friend’s business.

On the photo, I tried to make roses from ham. They were much prettier than from bacon flowers. Ham roses take much less time on oven than peppers and than bacon roses. I learned my lesson hard way!