Baked. Brie. Bites.

Baked. Brie. Bites. Baked… Brie… Bites. I love all of these words individually, but really like when they all come together in one thing. For just about any recipe, I like to have the end results greatly outweigh the amount of effort I’ve put into making it. And sometimes complicated doesn’t always equal delicious.

This recipe takes 10-15 minutes to assemble and roughly the same time to bake… and they are always the first things to disappear on an appetizer tray.

I found this on Pinterest, of course. And the link takes you to a blog post by a food blogger called Plain Chicken. The post was a review of cheeses they’d gotten and within it was the original recipe for Baked Brie Bites. I’ve made this for three parties in the last year and have modified it because I will do anything to make something awesome easier, quicker, and faster.

 

Baked Brie Bites Ingredients:
-Mini fillo shells- found in the freezer section
-Brie Cheese- whatever you can find, cheap or expensive, with or without rind, etc.
-Brown sugar
-Chopped pecans
-Honey

 

 

 

The mini fillo shells already come in this great plastic tray, so I just do all the assembly with the shells in their tray. I find it makes clean up easier as any spilled ingredients are in the tray that you are going throw away, anyway.

Now, like in all things, you have choices. This is one of those moments. You can choose to keep the rind on your brie or remove it. I’m in the removing it camp, but some people like their rind. To them, its part of their taste association with brie. And, let’s be honest, I’ll eat brie anyway I can get it… but, for my preference, I de-rind (de-round?) that sucker. Cut the brie into cubes and fill the fillo shell with as much cheese as you like. Since the cheese will melt later, it will fill in the bottom of your shell nicely.

The next few steps are just about applying your toppings The recipe suggests that you apply 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of brown sugar to each cup. Unless it’s new, my brown sugar is almost always hard to some degree. And in the past, I’ve gotten brown sugar chunks all over the place in this “application” process.

I discovered my next trick by accident. To prepare the brown sugar  for applying, I put about a cup of brown sugar into a ramekin covered by a wet paper towel in the microwave for 45 seconds to soften it so I could distribute with a teaspoon. The moisture from the paper towel not only softened my brown sugar, but it melted it all together… which turned out to be a great thing as now I could apply the brown sugar in a more controlled way by drizzling it over the bites. Be careful with melted sugars and caramels… because, if you didn’t know, they have a surface temperature hotter than the sun.

But, the clean-up benefits of this step outweigh the mess of distributing sugar crystals to 32 individual cups. See the below side-by-side comparison. The left side is the melted version with the right side being dry, brown sugar.
Brown Sugar Application

Next you apply the chopped pecans. I guess you could use any nut of choice but I’m a sucker for pecans. As when you added the brown sugar, you evenly distribute the chopped pecans onto your bites. I gently push them into the soft cheese so they don’t fall off or move in transit. After you have applied your pecans, just lightly drizzle the entire bite with the freshest honey you can find.

Baked Brie Assembly

Then place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and transfer shells from tray to cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 7-8 minutes… I try to keep an eye on these just to make sure they don’t get too burney.
After they’ve cooked, let them cool for a minute, but these are best just out of the oven. Don’t get me wrong, they are almost as good a few hours later… but like most melty things, they are best at their peak meltiness.

When done baking, remove from parchment paper, plate them to your liking, and watch ’em fly.

Baked Brie Bites

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Leigh

3 Comments

  1. I am not the biggest fan of Brie… Is there another cheese you would recommend to substitute bc I am a fan of brown sugar, honey & pecans!

    • Any of your sweeter, softer cheese should work. I would assemble the same way but just watch it for melting particulars.

  2. Brown sugar tip from my mom, Shirley: If it has hardened, put it in an airtight container with a slice of bread. This takes a few hours to work though, so you need to plan ahead. The bread slice thing works with stale cookies, too.

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