40 Days and 40 Nights: Day Fourteen: What's Jalapeño Poppin'!?

Back in 2007 when I ventured into the realm of veganism for the first time, I was obsessed with vegweb.com for recipes and ideas to create my own. I spent some time surfing the new and improved layout last night, and promptly decided that I needed some jalapeño poppers in my life, and STAT.

Here we go, kids! Here's the recipe to make your very own vegan jalapeño poppers.

What you need:

12 fresh jalapeño peppers

8 oz Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese

1/8 cup baco's or soy-replacement bacon

All purpose flour

Vegan breadcrumbs

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 tablespoon garlic powder

Plain non-dairy milk of your choosing (soy, rice, almond)

First, I cut the tops off of the peppers, halved them and placed them on a baking sheet that I sprayed with cooking spray and broiled them plain for 10 minutes to reduce the amount of heat.

Next, I set up my dredging station with one bowl of flour, one bowl of soy milk, and a bowl of breadcrumbs mixed with the onion and garlic powders.

In a large mixing bowl, I mixed the baco's and room-temperature cream cheese to create the pepper filling and then stuffed them!

You can see I started breading. Whoops! After the peppers are filled, dip them in plain flour, submerge in soy milk and roll through the breadcrumb mixture to coat. When those are done, pop the baking sheet in the freezer for ten or so minutes to firm the peppers. Remove them from the freezer, submerge in soy milk and roll in the breadcrumb mixture a second time.

Dip each pepper in vegetable or canola oil (your preference), and pop them in a 400 degree oven, turning once, for 15 minutes. Place on a paper towel and allow them to cool off a bit.