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. Mike bought me some beautiful orange and yellow tulips! 
2. He was also slightly unrecognizable!  Mike is growing his facial hair out as part of "Mo-vember".  While this is a great cause that I fully support, 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 with dinner.  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 Scampi Stuffed Shrimp). 

So let's talk chicken bacon bites.  Mike made these for me on our 2nd date, and they are absolutely delicious.  They are so simple and a enormous crowd-pleaser.
  

If you make them for your next get-together, your friends will think you are a genius.  Trust.

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 chili 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.

Combine the brown sugar and chili 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 chili powder mixture and place on the cooling rack in a single layer.

Cook for 30 minutes.  Serve immediately.

Original picture taken 11/19/12 - Oh my what a difference 8 months makes!