February 2, 2011

Appetizers galore - 3 different appetizers to spice up your party!


Good morning everyone!

I would like to share with you a few appetizers that I had tried for a couple of parties around my daughter's birthday time and Christmas! I came across these recipes on allrecipes.com and kraftrecipes.com and decided to give them a try since they had very high ratings and awesome reviews! I first made them for my lil one's birthday party! Eventhough we had a whole Indian dinner planned afterwards, I had to have a lot of appetizers for our guests (I love trying out new ones!)! So I chose the 7-layer dip, bacon wrapped smokies and cheesy spinach-artichoke dip as my three new try-outs, along with others like meatballs, peanuts, chips and salsa and so on! They were simple, easy and had our guests rave about how awesome they were! I had recipe requests from our guests!


The preparation of 7-layer dip went without a hitch, eventhough mine was more like a 4-layer dip! I did the taco seasoning-refried beans layer. the cream cheese-sour cream layer, a thin salsa layer and then the cheese layer with a few sliced olives on top. It tasted superb! Pair it with Tostitos Hint of Lime chips and mmmwah! One of the top favorites especially among our vegetarian friends!


The bacon-wrapped smokies needed a bit more effort - wrapping each cocktail sausage with a slice of bacon. I cut each strip of bacon into three so that I could wrap three sausages with one bacon strip. The first time I made them, I did the mistake of keeping them on flat sheets for baking. Of course, the bacon fat and sugar dripped down onto the oven base (which I actually didn't notice until later), and when I tried to bake my cheesy spinach artichoke dip, it starting smoking and the fire alarm went off! Our fire alarm says "FIRE FIRE!" when its beeping and after the nerve-wracking episode of calming my lil one and her friend down, I decided I would use slow cooker for my next try, whenever it is!

It wasnt long after, when I made it again for our Christmas party! I used a slow cooker and cooked it over 4 hours or so, but the liquid that came out was too much, and so my smokies were not as coated as when I made them in the ove. So word of advice, use a pan with sides and bake the smokies to perfection, definitely use foil to line the pan! Eventhough it was a bit messy, we all enjoyed it so much, it was the star appetizer of the party!


Because of my oven mishap with the smokies, I couldnt bake the cheesy spinach artichoke dip. I microwaved it for 10 minutes or so, but was never the same as if I had baked it. And it cooled down pretty quickly, so it didn't have the pulled cheese look, when dipped into! But other than that it was also pretty tasty!

So try these out and I am sure you wont be disappointed! Please do leave your comments and/or suggestions about the blog or the post or just say hi when you drop by!

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