Baked Cheese Bites

Do you guys remember how my Cake Batter Rice Krispies didn't turn out quite how I had hoped? Well, this week's recipe was a little bit of a mess, too.

I found the recipe for Baked Cheese Balls on Pinterest when Cole and I were scrolling through looking for something tasty to try. They looked so good and easy to make that we had to make them immediately.

We went to the store and picked up two different kinds of string cheese- Sargento's mozzarella and Kraft's jalapeno- because I wanted to dip mine in marinara sauce, and he wanted something with a little bit of a kick.

Ingredients:
String cheese
Milk
Bread crumbs

Cut the string cheese into bite-size pieces. Dunk each piece in a bit of milk, then roll around in some bread crumbs. 

Only use about 1/2 cup of milk and maybe a cup of crumbs. You can always pour more if you run out.

Transfer to a cookie sheet, making sure to space the bites evenly apart.

Little bites of cheese heaven

Here's where we hit the problem. The oven temperature and bake time didn't match between Pinterest and the actual blog. 

We baked ours for 8 minutes at 425 degrees and we got this:

Yeah. At least they didn't stick to the tray.

To be honest with you, we still ate these "cheese chips." Well, a few of them. They obviously could have been much better, but we just laughed about our failure and tried again.

For the second time around, we reduced the temperature to 325 degrees and only baked the bites for 5 minutes. They turned out better than the ones above, but they still weren't quite what we had hoped.

We also realized that the two different types of cheese melted at different rates. The jalapeno bites held up through the second round, but the mozzarella ones were pretty flattened.

Jalapeno on the left, mozzarella on the right

We didn't have time to try it out a third time, but I assure you that I will figure out the perfect temperature and bake time and post an update later this week.

My Tips:

We were thinking about trying a different type of bread crumb. The kind we used didn't have as much flavor as we had hoped. I think we will try out a different kind and possibly add some spices for taste.

I ate my mozzarella bites with a pizza sauce I heated up and Cole used a bit of ranch dressing to kick up the flavor of his jalapeno bites.

The good thing about this recipe is that it is baked instead of deep-fried, so it is somewhat healthy!

Have any suggestions? Let me know in the comments!