Chicken Breast in a Puff of Pastry

Pure deliciousness emanated out of my kitchen Saturday night. It smelled of pastry and cheese and a hint of bacon. It sounded like “mmmmm”, “This is good” and even “Can I have some more, please”. A home prepared meal that took about 30 minutes to prepare and 30 minutes to bake.

Before I share my newest recipe I’d like to introduce you to my kitchen help:
He’s a keeper, even if he refuses to wear pants
today
Chicken Breast in a Puff of Pastry

Ingredients:
3 or 4 chicken breasts
2 frozen puff pastry sheets
4 oz cream cheese
3 or 4 slices of bacon, roughly cut
1 green onion
1 large egg, beaten
1 Tb of McCormick’s Perfect Pinch for Rotisserie Chicken – It is my new favorite spice concoction.
— If you don’t have that on hand mix 2 tsp of Paprika, a tsp of garlic powder, a dash of pepper, and a dash of onion salt. The beautiful thing about spices though is you can mix them to your taste. Use your favorite mix of spices that compliment chicken.

If you are using frozen pastry sheets be sure to pull them out of the freezer. Mine required 40 minutes at room temperature to thaw. Check your box.

Preheat oven to 400F.

Fry bacon until it is crispy and then place on paper towel to soak up extra grease. Chop green onion. Place bacon, green onion, cream cheese and spices in mixer (or mix in a bowl with spoon, I’m far too lazy busy being Mom, cook, referee, etc etc.) Mix until well blended.

On a side note: I love this pinterest inspired idea. Instead of throwing the roots away from your green onions, submerge them in water and place near a window. The green part will grow back and in only a few weeks you’ll have more onion for your next dish.
Next spread out your thawed pastry shells. I used Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Sheets found in the freezer section near the desserts at my grocery store or your Commissary.

Since I had three chicken-breasts I pressed the two together at the short edge of the rectangle sheet with my finger to make one long pastry. Then I cut it into three equal pieces for each piece of chicken. If you have four breasts then you can just cut each sheet in half.

Slice each piece of chicken down the middle being careful not to cut all the way through. (If you do cut all the way through that’s okay. I can never do this sort of thing perfectly myself.) The idea is to make a pocket to put your cream cheese mixture in.

Scoop a third or fourth (depending how much chicken you have) of the cream cheese mixture into each breast.

Next place a chicken breast on the center of a cut pastry-sheet. Spread some of your beaten egg around it which is going to serve as the glue to keep your puff together. Fold the pastry around the chicken and place on a lightly greased baking pan.