Bacon is a welcome ingredient all year long. But come the holiday season, there seem to be more and more delicious ways to add the savory meat to your meals. For these easy one-bite Gorgonzola-Date Bites, we take full advantage of bacon’s serious flavor profile and its flexible wrapping abilities.
These one-bite appetizers start with plump and sweet Medjool dates. We opt for Medjool over other date varieties because they tend to be larger, with more room for stuffing than, say Deglet noor dates. When you bake Medjool dates in the oven, as we do for this easy holiday appetizer, they transform into warm and gooey bites with a naturally sweet caramel flavor.
We stuff our plump Medjools full of delightfully sharp Litehouse® Simply Artisan Gorgonzola Cheese. Just wait until you taste savory warm gorgonzola melded with caramelly dates. We also bumped up the filling flavor by adding minced chives to our cheese. They add the right amount of crunch and some fresh greenness to these gorgonzola-date bites.
And finally, we didn’t forget that bacon! Grab a handful of toothpicks (the round ones are nicest) for this step. After filling all of your dates, secure a strip of bacon around each one, creating a neat little gorgonzola-flavored package. Ideally, the bacon piece will be large enough to overlap where its ends meet. Stick a toothpick all the way through the date to pierce this overlap. It will help the bacon stay closed in the oven, as it tends to unravel as it bakes.
Now, bake your cute little packages until the bacon is crispy, the gorgonzola is melted, and your kitchen smells amazing. For serving, you may want to pull the toothpicks out a bit so each bacon-wrapped date can sit up on its own with a handy toothpick handle to grab for a bite.