Chicken Bacon Bites

After a long week in Michigan on business, I was very happy to come home to Virginia and start getting ready for the holidays!  I also had two surprises waiting for me when I got home:
#1 - Mr. Happy Plate bought me some beautiful orange and yellow tulips!  What a great husband I have <3! 
#2 - Mr. Happy Plate was slightly unrecognizable when I got home!  He is growing his facial hair out as part of "Mo-vember".  While this is a great cause, and I support the cause fully, my husband has overachieving hair glands, and after 16 days of Movember, well... he looks like a lumberjack!  Oh well... 11 days left.

Anyway, since I had been away from the kitchen for a whole week, we went a little crazy last night in the kitchen.  We decided to have a Tapas night and made 4 different small plates for dinner (Chicken Bacon Bites, Steak Bites with Cranberry Horseradish dipping sauce, Pulled Pork Baked Egg Rolls, and Stuffed Shrimp Scampi). 


Tapas Dinner!

• The good news: I don't have to make Thanksgiving dinner because we always go to my parents house in NY.  Mom does most of the cooking, and I help as much as I can.  So I felt like I should get a lot of cooking out of the way while we were still home in VA. 
• The bad news: I was overambitious. I thougth it would be a great idea to make cupcakes for Mr. Happy Plate to bring to work today, a new recipe of NYC peanuts that I found in my new Food Network magazine, homemade rolls to bring to NY for Thanksgiving, plus 4 dishes for us to eat for dinner. 

Needless to say, I messed up the peanuts (forgot them in the oven!) and was a little hasty with my measurements for the cupcake ganache, so that did not work out either.  So out of 7 attempted dishes, I'd call 5 a success.  That's a 71% success rate, so still passing I suppose.

So, I will share one of these Tapas dishes with you now.... Chicken Bacon Bites.  Mr. Happy Plate made these for me on our 2nd date, and they are absolutely delicious, and an easy appetizer that everyone will love.  (Gotta love a man that cooks!)

Printable Recipe HERE

Ingredients:
3 large chicken breasts, trimmed of fat and cut into small bite-sized pieces
1 package center-cut bacon
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons Chile powder
Cooking Spray
Toothpicks

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Prepare a cookie sheet with a cooling rack placed on top.  Spray the cooling rack with cooking spray. 

Cut the slices of bacon into thirds or fourths, depending on how big your pieces of chicken are.  The bacon should be big enough to wrap once around the chicken.  Combine the brown sugar and Chile powder in a bowl.  Wrap each piece of chicken with one piece of bacon and secure with a toothpick.  Repeat for all the chicken.  Roll each piece of chicken and bacon in the sugar and Chile powder mixture and place on the cooling rack in a single layer.


Cook for 30 minutes.  Serve immediately.  YUM.

I shared this recipe on Foodie Friends Friday!