Unraveling Pinterest’s Most Popular Halloween Jalapeño Popper Recipe
Unraveling Pinterest’s Most Popular Halloween Jalapeño Popper Recipe
The most pinned Halloween recipe for 2018, according to Pinterest, happens to be jalapeño popper mummies from Erika Williams, AKA the blogger behind The Hopeless Housewife. Having garnered 138K pins, it appeals to those who embrace Halloween more for cute costumes and candy and less for monstrous masks and movies.
The spicy, spooky, but mostly irresistibly adorable app starts with cheese-stuffed peppers, which are wrapped in crescent roll “bandages,” baked until gooey and golden brown, and studded with candy eyes. If you take a look at the original pin (pictured left) compared to our in-house version (pictured right), you’ll see the end result’s pretty spot on. Read on to learn our takeaways and find out the slight changes we made so you can flawlessly recreate this recipe.
“I love Halloween foods that, at first glance, are spooky but when looking closer are actually cute and fun,” Williams tells Brit + Co. “When coming up with this recipe, I wanted to make something that brought me back to my childhood but that was still for adults. A reimagined jalapeño popper seemed like the perfect way to go.”
We’re all for nostalgia, but what exactly is it about these snacks that led to hundreds of thousands of pins? “I think it’s because they are so darned cute! I can’t help but smile when I look at a tray full of them,” she says. “Also, once you look at the recipe, you find that there are very few ingredients, and they are relatively simple to make. You can’t really ‘mess up’ wrapping the jalapeños, because there really is no ‘right’ way to do it.”
Check out our step-by-step boo-torial below, sprinkled with a few of our insights, then get to bakin’.
HALLOWEEÑO JALAPEÑO POPPER MUMMIES RECIPE
(Makes 20 poppers)
Ingredients:
- 10 jalapeño peppers
- 8 ounces room-temperature cream cheese
- 8 ounces jack cheese or your favorite cheese, shredded (We used mozzarella)
- 1 green onion, finely chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 package refrigerated crescent rolls (We used Pillsbury Sweet Hawaiian Crescent Rolls)
- 2 eggs, beaten
- candy eyeballs
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. In a small bowl, mix the cream cheese, shredded cheese, green onion, and salt until well blended.
3. Slice jalapeños in half lengthwise with seeds removed and stems left on. We accidentally cut the stems off, but they still turned out cute!
4. Roll out the crescent dough, and separate into 4 rectangles (not triangles). Press your fingers into any perforations to seal them.
5. Using a pizza cutter, cut each rectangle into 10 pieces (or as many as you can without making them too thin) lengthwise. It’s tough to get even slices, so don’t worry about making yours perfectly uniform; the mummies are extra endearing when they’re all a little different. We also made closer to 5 slices per rectangle than 10, which was totally fine.
6. Fill each jalapeño half with the cheese mixture. Don’t worry if the halves seem jam-packed; that just means ultimate cheesiness.
7. Wrap one strip of dough around each stuffed jalapeño, leaving a space for the eyes (which you’ll add later). Use two pieces of dough if necessary. Feel free to change up the wrapping style each time for unique mummies.
8. Place jalapeños on a baking sheet and brush with egg mixture, which makes them extra shiny and crisp.
9. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Because our dough strips turned out a little thicker, the mummies took roughly 12 minutes to bake.
10. Remove mummies from oven, and press candy eyes into empty space. Serve immediately.
Final verdict? The measurements for this recipe are just right, and it’s crafty enough to challenge you without giving you a headache. These lovable snacks are spicy and melty on the inside, crispy on the outside, and just the right level of sweet due to the crescent dough. In the words of Williams, “Cute and simple to make? That’s a win/win.”
Want more Halloween inspiration? Follow Brit + Co on Pinterest!
(Recipe adapted from The Hopeless Housewife; photos via The Hopeless Housewife and Brittany Griffin/Brit + Co)
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