 In our home, a yummy meal can consist of the simplest ingredients. We are, well naturally, we live in Wisconsin, so we are big cheese fans. You know, of course I have to be able to make cheese jokes. Yes, I am a huge cheese fan and for us sometimes cheese is the perfect meal. And I don't always have the perfect piece of cheese. And so I will take whatever I have and turn it into something wonderful that we can eat and have a snack or make a whole meal out of or sometimes just a little appetizer for ourselves. So I always have a nice chunk of either triple cream brie or regular brie, you know, whatever, camembert or something like that in the refrigerator. And today I have only half of a piece which is fine. So I'm going to make for us a wonderful little appetizer. We'll call it a mini meal. And maybe you've made these before. I don't know, surely you've possibly heard of them before. It's basically you take puff pastry, you put your brie in the middle, you add a little magical lusciousness to it, wrap it all up, pop it in the oven and then you know you just about fall off your chair while you're eating it because it is, you know, dripping down your chin and it's so unbelievably delicious that you just could have it for breakfast too. I do have it for breakfast. If it's leftover, I pop it in the microwave. So good. So when you start with your brie, I always for lack of a better word peel the brie. I cut all of the that hard, riny, brined stuff off. And the reason I do that is of course I've done it the other way naturally. And it's not as good because that stuff is hard. And then when you're trying to get your luscious bite of your puff pastry and a little snivel of the brie, you get that part. Honest to God, normally this outside part is like my favorite. I love this part. Most people don't like it, but I think, hmm, that little hard part makes me not. I love it. So I'm not throwing that away for sure. That'll be like my little snack with wine tonight. You might not like that part. I think it's really good. So I've got this basically prepared. It's all skinned. Hmm. Then I don't ever make my own puff pastry. If you do, way to go, that's even more impressive. I don't ever, I don't think I ever will. I don't know. Maybe when I'm like 80, but not now. I don't feel like it. And I buy pre-made puff pastry. And, you know, it comes in, there are two of these in one pack. So I take them out and while I'm waiting, I just threw this back here, but while I'm waiting for it to fall a little bit, I'll just keep them separately wrapped in a little wax paper. It's just better because then you don't end up with your cracked edges and everything else. And I'll roll it out just the tiny little bit. I don't use much flour at all because it's pretty much perfect and ready to go. But I do like to just open it up just the tiniest little bit. And, you know, the great thing about puff pastry is it is so versatile. I mean, it is endless what you can do with puff pastry. It's for sure one of the coolest, most amazing things next to ground beef. So I've got this beautiful little piece right here. You can see. Now I'm going to end up tossing some of this because I have a smaller piece of green. Normally if you have a whole wheel of green, it's perfect and actually fits it beautifully. But since I only have this little piece, I'm kind of kind of turned it into its own little wheel, right? So then what I do is where did I put my spoons? Oh, hang on. I'm so sorry. I'm going to grab a spoon. And I take some apricot preserves because they're just kind of the perfect flavor to go with it. And I just absolutely goop them on the top. And what's great about apricot preserves with this is the sweet with a yummy salty, it's so good. And then, you know, I am, I'm an absolute bacon fanatic. I love bacon so much. I love the smell of it cooking in our house. I love eating it. If I have leftover bacon, you will nearly lose your hand. If I don't get to it first and wrap it up and put it in the fridge and use it with something else later, I love it. So I took bacon actually from this morning and I just chopped it in the little pieces and I will just sprinkle this on the top. You can already taste this, right? Isn't it making you nuts? You know, puff pastry and bacon and cheese and all together yum. Naturally, I looked for my string before, but you know, we have four little boys and um, they take my string and they tie their little stuffed animals and army guys to chairs and stuff. So I couldn't find it. So anyway, I went to my craft room. I got a different piece of string. I'm usually not using this. I'm usually using kitchen string. So forgive me my darlings, but that's what you're getting today. You're getting that. So then I just pull this all up, okay? Right? You can see how simply this comes together. So you've got this little love pouch here. Isn't it cute? Feels good. And what you do is you tie it. Don't eat the string. My darlings, you won't like the string. You won't taste good. It won't come out well. You tie it up like that. And then what you can do is just flip these little beautiful sides over. If you want to, if you feel like that's too much, you know, you can just kind of cut some of it off. You don't have to because it's actually quite pretty and it'll melt all over itself. Now, then what I'll do is I'll take this little luscious packet, I'm going to grab something out of my fridge because it's always pretty to be able to take just a little bit of cream and put it on the top. Hang on. And it will make it the prettiest color. You can certainly use, you know, you can use egg, you can use egg white, you can, you know, it's all good. You'll, you'll, you can, you can use a number of things. But this is quite pretty actually when you do this. So this is just heavy cream and I'll just brush the whole lovely beautiful thing. And then I have the oven set at 400 degrees. And I'm going to pop this baby in for about, it'll usually goes about 20 minutes. I'll kind of check it as I go. And isn't this cute though? It already looks cute. Now wait till it gets all brown and pretty and puffy and wonderful. And then we're going to eat some of it together and you'll see just how good it is. Okay, my darling's it's the bewitching hour. We're going to see how beautifully puffed she is. She is. You'll find me seeing opera because when I get excited about things I sing opera even though I have no voice none at all. Okay, look how pretty she came out. We should give her a name. I can't think of one but she needs a pretty name. She's all puffed and beautiful. And now what I'm going to do is grab excuse me. My spatula slide her onto a plate. Look how pretty that is. So this is a perfect snack. You have somebody coming over. It's the perfect nash. Serve it with some beautiful pairs that you know it's nice if they're a little bit ripen so they're kind of juicy. That's always good. Some crackers are beautiful. I prefer really simple simple crackers with this sort of thing. I'm going to tip her up once more and then I'm going to open it so you can see how beautiful. So you can see how pretty and golden this is. I'm going to tell you one thing a little tip is that when you're cooking one of these you know I told you 20 minutes. Sometimes it takes 25 you know just kind of look at it. You'll be able to tell is it nice and puffed. Does it look like it's about to flake? You don't want to under cook it of course because that means the dough underneath will still feel a little bit doughy and it's not as good that way of course. But look how pretty with all that extra dough on the top you know how I told you could cut it if you wanted to but it looks like a great big you know leaf opening up and you know offering itself to you. So the other thing I'm going to tell you is if you feel like while it's cooking the whole thing is looking like it's done except the top is getting a little bit brown. Take a little piece of tin foil, come soft, right, and just sort of lay it over the part that looks like it's getting a little too brown like the pretty little opened up leaf part because then the heat won't directly be hitting that but everything else will get nicely beautiful and yummy and delicious. So I'm going to open this for all of us to enjoy. I so wish you were able to look at how pretty. Usually I'll let it sit for a little bit because it is so like right now okay. So let it sit a little bit before you open it but for our purposes I'm going to open it up. The cheese is extremely gooey soft right now it shouldn't be quite so flowy but if you let it rest a little bit it will be just perfect. I am dying to taste it I'm afraid I may just burn my mouth off but let's just see and it smells so good the cheese mixed with the apricot preserves and then the bacon again you kind of can't go wrong putting bacon into anything in my world maybe not chocolate cake. Oh it's so good. Sweet and salty. I'm going to take the whole thing and eat it by myself. I'm sure you will too. One that I need to.