Brie Will Have a Good Time

This holiday season has been one of "what's in my pantry" toss stuff together food. Because with three kids, a full time job, and the holidays, who has time for much else?  As it is, my 10 year old made the Christmas cookies this year. Two amazing batches of chocolate chip!  But every so often I get a craving for something particular.  A friend of mine recently brought Brie and pears on toothpicks to a party. I swear I ate half the tray. I love Brie... Love it.  So of course I've been craving more.  And as I wandered around the over crowded grocery store the other day, it dawned on me I should do a baked Brie for a Christmas meal we attended last night.

Now, baked Brie is pretty basic. It's Brie. Baked until gooey.  And after much searching of the Internet, I found recipes to be fairly basic. Bake the Brie, drizzle honey, maybe some nuts.  But I was looking for more. So I wandered around the jammed grocery store looking for inspiration. Besides, the more time I wasted maybe the lines would get shorter? (Did not happen)

Roaming from aisle to aisle, throwing more things into my cart than I came in for to begin with, I rounded he dried fruit section and saw dates.  I haven't had dates in many years. I love dates. Dates are sweet. Dates have a great reference to one of my favorite movies Indian Jones. Dates... Yes dates! And other dried fruit! And that's how this recipe came to be. All the dried fruit I could think, and of course that "drizzle" of honey. Oh this was gonna be great. Let's play!

Ingredients

• Small wheel Brie
• Dried sweet dates
• Dried apricots
• Craisins
• Dried pomegranates
• Golden raisins
• Honey (I chose a Brazilian raw honey, only because I did not have a local honey in stock)
• Green apples

Steps

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
2. Unwrap the Brie and place into oven safe bake wear or parchment lined baking sheet 
3. Cut four slices in top of Brie
4. Set aside until oven is warmed to temp 
5. Meanwhile...
6. Chop the dates, and apricots to be the same size as raisins, craisins, pomegranates.
7. How many of them Jenn?? - how much fruit do you want to serve over top? Little or lot? I had enough that when combined was about a cup and half
8. Put all chopped fruit into small sauce pan
9. Pour in honey, Enright to cover all fruit. I probably used 1/4 to 1/2 cup.
10. Bring to simmer and let the honey bubble around the fruit for 5-10 minutes so that fruit reconstituted a bit and absorbs the honey.

1. Once the oven is at 350, put the Brie in.
2. Let heat in the oven until soft and pliable. If you press down on top of cheese and it gives way easy, or starts to ooze out of the cuts you made.
3. Remove Brie from oven
4. If you baked in a bakeware dish, just pour the fruit and honey chutney right over the top, serve hot
5. If you baked on a cookie sheet, carefully remove Brie and place on plate, pour chutney over top, serve hot.

Slice green apples and serve as chips to dip. Don't bother serving this with actual crackers, the green apple tartness with the sweet fruit chutney and the bite of the Brie will be an explosion of flavor in your mouth.

Enjoy!!!

Ooey gooey amazingness going on right here.