A grown up grilled cheese sandwich loaded with bacon, avocado, chicken, and pepper jack cheese.
True story: I didn’t learn how to make a proper classic grilled cheese sandwich until I was in my late teens. You need white bread and sliced american cheese to make perfect diner-style grilled cheeses and I was raised in a whole wheat and block cheddar household.
The day I finally got my hands on some individually wrapped, processed as heck cheese slices and melted them over the whitest of white bread, stands out as the first great grilled cheese milestone in my life.
The day I put together today’s recipe is the second.
There comes a time in all of our lives when we must put our childhood grilled cheese sandwiches behind us and graduate to something a little more interesting, grown up, and exciting, something like Spicy Bacon Avocado Chicken Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.
I’ve been making these sandwiches since college, and if I remember correctly, the thought process that went into making them was something like, let’s take everything I like and put it on one sandwich. And not to toot my own horn or anything, but that makes for a really good sandwich.
You start with a couple pieces of hearty bread. Texas toast is fantastic for this, but any good-quality white bread will do. Then you pile it with slices of avocado, chicken, tomatoes, a little mayo, a thick slice of pepper jack cheese, and bacon.
Ingredients
- ▢ 8 slices bacon
- ▢ 8 slices good-quality white bread
- ▢ 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- ▢ 12 ounces cooked chicken shredded and warm*
- ▢ 1 avocado sliced, room temperature and sliced
- ▢ 4 slices pepper jack cheese
- ▢ 1 large tomato optional, sliced
Instructions
- On a griddle or in a large skillet*, cook bacon until done and set aside.
- Spread mayonnaise over the bread and assemble sandwiches with bacon, chicken, avocado slices, optional tomato and pepperjack cheese.
- If you are going to cook the sandwiches in the bacon drippings, scrape or pour off all but about a tablespoon of grease, heat over medium heat and place sandwiches into the pan.
- If you don’t want to use the bacon drippings, wipe out grease and spread a very light coating of mayonnaise on both sides of the sandwiches before placing into the hot pan.
- Cook, flipping once, until both sides are browned and cheese is melted.
- Serve and enjoy.
Notes
Nutritional Information
Used to Make This Recipe
Saturday Morning Snapshot
Cap 3 screenings have begun, time to go on the spoiler offensive…
State of the Blog
My Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes With Broccoli and Cheese Sauce were featured in a Redbook round up of slow cooker meals on their site this week. The caption they gave it cracked me up, and if you are looking for some super easy dinners, go check out the fantastic other recipes in that post!
On the blog, I posted one of my most made recipes, homemade panini. Fun fact about that post, I spent a ridiculously long time AGONIZING about whether Baking Mischief was going to be a site that said “panino” or “panini.” I went down a linguistic rabbit hole that included Reddit, cooking sites, Italian and English language forums, and more than one academic paper, hoping someone would just tell me what to do. No one would, so I went with my personal preference, fully aware that I’m probably on the wrong side of history with this one. Wednesday, things were much simpler with another easy green bean side, and Friday there were scones!
Next week is sandwich number two of our Hot Sandwich series, I do a magic trick with Nutella, and on Friday, turn that magic trick into something delicious.
Recipes/posts released this week were:
Easy Homemade Panini Without a Panini Press – Perfectly cooked panini, crunchy and toasted on the outside, warm, gooey, and cheesy on the inside, all without using a panini press!
Quick Green Beans With Bacon Side Dish – Fresh green beans with chopped bacon, tossed in bacon drippings make an easy, tasty, and surprisingly low-calorie side dish.
Glazed Jam Scones – Adorable buttermilk scones baked with your favorite jam inside and brushed with a buttery vanilla glaze.
Pop-culture Corner
The first wave of Captain America: Civil War screenings has started, and the minute I began to see early (good!) reactions in my Twitter feed, up went the Twitter and Chrome keyword blockers. I’m not usually a spoiler-phobe, but since I’ve read the comics and know what happens, I guess I really don’t want to know what happens.
The Rogue One teaser dropped. Whadja think? I’m a big fan of Felicity Jones and an even bigger fan of flowing capes, so for me, so far, so good.
Speaking of that Rogue One trailer, every time I peak outside of my perfectly curated Twitter bubble into the wider Twitterverse, the world feels like a completely garbage place.
Except for when I stumble upon tweets like this:
A message from an old friend. #Kingsman pic.twitter.com/n4HShWktIK — Taron Egerton (@TaronEgerton) April 7, 2016
A simple and easy method for making homemade Nutella chips for baking.
Are you a Nutella fan? I feel like I was completely late to this whole Nutella thing. It wasn’t a staple in my house growing up. I don’t think I ever even heard the word “Nutella” until a couple of years ago after the rise of Pinterest when suddenly Nutella desserts were taking over the internet.
It was even longer before I actually got around to trying the stuff, but once I tasted it, I was like, O kay. I get it.
There are lots of ways to get Nutella into desserts: stuff it, swirl it, frost it. But my favorite method is Nutella Chips! It’s the least messy of the methods I’ve tried, and you can use it almost anywhere you use chocolate chips (see recipe notes), so the options are endless. Plus, it’s just a pretty neat little trick that people always get a kick out of.
The method is super easy and requires less effort than running to the store and grabbing a bag of regular old chocolate chips. You get some butter. You get some Nutella. Then you mix em, freeze em, and chop em. And voila, Nutella chips.
I have a recipe using these Nutella chips coming up on Friday, but in the mean time, I’d love to hear from you. How would you use Nutella chips in your baking?
Ingredients
- ▢ 9 ounces (just under 1 cup) Nutella
- ▢ 6 tablespoons ( 3 ounces) salted butter
Instructions
- Place a sheet of parchment paper over a flat tray that will fit in your freezer.
- In a medium microwave-safe bowl, melt butter in the microwave. Add Nutella and stir until butter is completely incorporated.
- Using a baking spatula, spread mixture over about a 5 by 10-inch rectangle on the tray, so it is approximately 1/4-inch thick all over.
- Place in the freezer for at least an hour.
- Once frozen, transfer the block, still on the parchment paper, to a cutting board. Use a large chef’s knife to chop the block into small chunks. You want to do this process fairly quickly as the mixture will melt easily in a warm kitchen and from the heat of your hands. If your kitchen is warm, and your chips have begun to stick to each other, slide the paper back onto your tray and pop everything into the freezer for 15 minute or so to firm back up. Once solid, gently break up any stuck-together pieces and continue.
- Lift the parchment paper and pour chips into an air-tight container and immediately place back in the freezer. Keep in the freezer until just before adding to your dessert. Use within two weeks.
Notes
Recipe Adapted From: Group Recipes
Used to Make This Recipe
Spicy Chicken Bacon Avocado Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Ingredients
- 8 slices bacon
- 8 slices good-quality white bread
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- 12 ounces cooked chicken shredded and warm*
- 1 avocado sliced, room temperature and sliced
- 4 slices pepper jack cheese
- 1 large tomato optional, sliced
Instructions
- On a griddle or in a large skillet*, cook bacon until done and set aside.
- Spread mayonnaise over the bread and assemble sandwiches with bacon, chicken, avocado slices, optional tomato and pepperjack cheese.
- If you are going to cook the sandwiches in the bacon drippings, scrape or pour off all but about a tablespoon of grease, heat over medium heat and place sandwiches into the pan.
- If you don’t want to use the bacon drippings, wipe out grease and spread a very light coating of mayonnaise on both sides of the sandwiches before placing into the hot pan.
- Cook, flipping once, until both sides are browned and cheese is melted.
- Serve and enjoy.
