Tasty Tuesday {Cream Cheese Chicken}

Get ready for another episode of Tasty Tuesday.  I'm honestly not sure how the Pioneer Woman does it.  I feel like it's so difficult to cook every week.  And to think, I did it most days this winter!

I began searching for a new recipe to post on the blog because I feel like I make my old standby recipes all of the time.  I thought about a wedding present that we received from our favorite family--the Lovings. {don't worry, we have a lot of favorite families. If you're reading, you're our favorite too!}

I really need a new Loving family photo!  I feel like I post this one on here all of the time!  Anyway, this photo was taken from our church wedding shower.  At this shower, the Loving family {okay, really Jenny} gave us the most amazing gift ever!  The entire time we'd been engaged, I'd been BEGGING Jenny for recipes.  I'd make comments like "you don't have to give us anything for our wedding EXCEPT that Oreo Ball recipe" or "...that chicken recipe" or "...that cheesecake recipe."  Insert whatever really good thing we had recently eaten at their house. 

So at this shower, Jenny and the Loving family gave us this:

It's the world's cutest recipe box {MSU style} of course.  And it's filled with recipe cards!  In fact, when I opened it, I was like "are the oreo balls in here? the chicken? the cheesecake?"  Well you get the point.  Her response was YES!  So now I have all of my Loving favorites.  She even gave me extra cards to fill out and add recipes.  She just knows that there are probably more recipes of hers that I will want!

So, I went to this box the other day when searching for a new recipe to make for David and I. I made this chicken recipe right after we got married, and it kind of turned out horrible.  So I adjusted and made it more like what I remember having at Jenny's house!  So without further background, here is Cream Cheese Chicken.

I would classify this recipe as the Southerner's Chicken Cordon Bleu.  It's not cordon bleu, but it's very similar in some ways. I almost thought about titling it that!

 So to begin, you need a camera to take pictures--which I couldn't locate.  So I used my camera on my phone. So the pictures aren't as good. So you'll just have to deal with it. So what if I like saying so. SO?!

First you need to grab some boneless skinless chicken breasts.  There were two in my freezer so since I'm cooking for two, that's what I grabbed.  Yes, that's freezer burn. No you couldn't taste it.

Place the chicken between two layers of wax paper.

You don't want little pieces of chicken all over your kitchen, so you probably should do that!

Next, take your awesome meat tenderizer that you got for a wedding present because your husband registered for 82 of them.  Er. Or actually, if you're like us and your husband registered for 82 of them, you accidentally deleted the 82 meat tenderizers instead of dropping it down to just 1 meat tenderizer.  This resulted in receiving zero meat tenderizers and a year later, there is still not a meat tenderizer in your kitchen.

Therefore, meat my good friend Blueberry Pie Filling.  Or Mr. Filling for short.

Take Mr. Filling {or Mr. Green Bean, or Mr. Campbells, or Mr. Kidney Bean} and pulverize your chicken until it reaches a thin thickness.  The recipe says 1/2 thickness, but my chicken breasts were rather thick.  Beat them until they look like this:

And apologize to Mr. Filling for the bruises...

Or just go buy a meat tenderizer and avoid his untimely death by beating.  You can also buy chicken breasts that are thinly shaved and avoid the beating all together.  If the thin sliced chicken had been in my freezer, I would have just used those.

Next you want to slice your chicken breasts.  The original recipe doesn't call for you to do this, but I remember small servings when Jenny served it.  So I sliced mine up, and it worked a LOT better!

Next, take your favorite seasoning salt out and season the chicken.  My family uses {and has used for ages} Morton's Nature's Seasoning.  The story is that a person who worked for Morton's gave my Grandfather's sister {Molly M, that would be your Grandma} a box of this stuff when they had just began making it.  Marketing strategy at it's finest.  She then passed this seasoning to all of the females in her family. And I would say that Morton's marketing strategy worked because if you go in my Grandmother's, my Mom's, or my kitchen pantry, you will find this stuff.  Go try it. It really is awesome, and we use it on EVERYTHING!  I don't think I could cook without it!

Now it's time to locate the cream cheese.  I used original because it's what was in my refrigerator to keep me from having to visit the grocery store, but in my opinion, you could EASILY substitute fat free cream cheese. I can't even tell a difference.  And again, if fat free had been in my fridge, I probably would have used that!

The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of cream cheese per chicken breast, but because I sliced mine up, I put 1 tablespoon per slice.  

Then, you need to spread out the cream cheese on the chicken breast which is easier said then done if you didn't let your cream cheese soften before trying to do this.  However, do it the best you can. It will be okay either way.

Next, cube up some butter.  The real deal.  Not margarine. 

And dot it on top of the cream cheese. 

Next, have some toothpicks handy and begin to roll up each chicken breast piece.  After it's rolled, secure with a toothpick.

Locate some bacon.  I always cut my bacon package in half, and since I was using leftover bacon from another recipe, I had no choice but to use precut bacon.  This actually worked out well because the bacon didn't stay soggy on the bottom since there wasn't really any bacon on the bottom. 

Take the bacon, and wrap it around the chicken roll ups as shown below.  I used two halves per chicken roll up.  Then places it in a baking dish.  Not a pan.  Juice is going to come out, so make sure it's in a dish of some sort.

Stick the whole dish in a 400 degree oven for about 35 minutes.  You'll want to watch for the juices to run clear.  After the 35 minutes, switch your oven to broil and allow the bacon to crisp up.  This should take around 5 minutes.  I watched carefully because I didn't want my toothpicks to catch on fire.  I'm not sure if they would have or not, but I wasn't taking chances.

My hubby was starving so he had already stolen one in the above photo of what they looked like after they came out of the oven. 

Serve on a plate to your hungry hubby!

I should have photographed the inside so that you could see the roll up, but I didn't.  Plus I was using my phone so I'm not sure you would have been able to see!

As always, I hope you enjoyed and that you're willing to give it a try!  Here's the printed recipe if you want a concise version.  Also, these are the cute recipe cards Jenny gave me to match my recipe box from above.  Aren't they presh?  Thanks Jenny for your culinary contribution to our dinner this week and Tasty Tuesday!