One of the girls at work brought a version of this recipe into work one day and it went down a treat. When we were kindly asked around to some Irish friends for Christmas day, I decided that it might be a nice to nibble on over a few drinks. It was a roaring success; I must have been asked by each person at Christmas dinner (think there were 12 people) how I made it. It’s dead easy, you should give it a go if you are having people over for nibbles and drinks.
Ingredients
1 cob loaf
3 spring onions, chopped
300g bacon, chopped
250g tub of sour cream
150g tub of chives and herb cream cheese
150g grated cheese
1 tbs oil
Black pepper to season
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Cut the top off the cob loaf, approximately 2cms in thickness. Tear the top of the loaf into pieces.
3. Scoop out the soft inside of the cob loaf and also tear it into pieces and set aside.
4. Chop the bacon into small pieces. I used bacon bits in the past and I thought they tasted a bit processed, so I prefer to use normal bacon and chop it up. Streaky bacon would also be good. Heat a frying pan and add the oil. Fry off the bacon until crispy and remove from the pan and leave to cool.
5. Mix the sour cream, cream cheese, spring onion and cooled bacon together in a bowl. Add some pepper to season. I don’t add salt as there is normally plenty in the cream cheese and the bacon also tends to be salty. Spoon the creamy mixture into the loaf centre and sprinkle with the grated cheese.
6. Place the loaf and the bread bits on an oven proof tray and heat in the oven, this will take approximately 30 minutes. Remove the bread pieces from the oven if they are burning and the creamy mixture is not fully heated through.
7. Use the bread bits to scoop up the creamy mixture and munch away to your hearts content. Once the bread bits are finished, you can tear off pieces from the outside of the loaf.
You can add spinach or sweet corn kernels or both if you want to mix it up.