Stuffed Mushrooms: A delicious appetizer

Yikes! April just seemed to fly by! For Cinco de Mayo I made turkey tacos and chicken taquitos. It was delicious and a great mini-celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Really, any excuse to eat Mexican food is good in my book! Life's been about the same. I got taco seasoning for free the other day because of a coupon and a good sale. Woohoo!

We didn't do much for Mother's day, but we did get mom a card and a hammock. She was happy. We had homemade burgers, baked beans, pasta salad, veggies, and fruit for dinner. It was so yummy!

The recipe for today doesn't take as long as you might expect (especially after seeing how many steps this recipe includes). As usual, I tweaked the recipe a bit... mostly because I didn't have cayenne pepper the first time I made them. Mom actually preferred the tweaked recipe instead of the normal recipe. She decided that the cayenne pepper gave them a bit too much kick for her tastes. As usual, use what you believe you can handle and you can have the spicy level you want. :) The best part about Allrecipes is that you can tweak the recipe according to how much of one ingredient you have (example: It will tweak the recipe for you so you don't have to calculate how much of everything you will need for only 6 mushrooms).

Stuffed Mushrooms (recipe from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

• 12 whole, fresh mushrooms (I used white mushrooms and baby bella mushrooms) 
• 1 TBSP vegetable oil or any neutral oil
• 1 TBSP minced garlic (approximately 3 cloves of garlic)
• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened to room temperature
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• 2 TBSP bread crumbs, optional
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp. onion powder (I used dried and chopped onion)
• 1/4 tsp. ground cayenne pepper (I used red pepper flakes for a little less heat)

Instructions:

1. Clean your mushrooms. Dampen a paper towel and wipe off any dirt. I don't suggest rinsing the mushrooms directly under the faucet because they are supposed to turn out less tender. 
2. Carefully break off the stews of your mushrooms and put to the side. 
3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
4. Lightly spray a muffin tin with cooking spray or use some vegetable oil to oil the muffin cups.
5. Place your mushroom caps into the muffin tin.
6. Finely chop the mushrooms stems.
7. Heat tablespoon of oil in a pan and then add the garlic and chopped mushrooms stems. Cook until garlic and mushrooms are fragrant and the mushrooms have shrunk some. Be careful not to brown the garlic! Set aside to cool.
8. In a bowl, combine the cream cheese, Parmesan, pepper, onion powder, bread crumbs (if you are using them), and ground cayenne pepper. Add the garlic and mushroom stems once it has cooled. 
9. Spoon a generous amount of filling into each mushroom cap.
10. Bake for 20 minutes or until mushrooms are hot and liquid is forming under the caps.  

If you need to tweak this recipe, feel free to do so. I took the other recipe and tweaked it to make delicious mushrooms! 

Did you do anything special for Mother's day? Let me know with a comment below! 

Love it? Hate it? Want to make it? Let me know what you think with a comment below!

As always...

Bon appétit!