JULIE WELLS: Buffalo chicken tortilla pinwheels add kick to holiday appetizers

The holiday season is in full swing, which means your calendars are probably full of Christmas shindigs. If that is the case, that also means you’ll need to take a dish or two to some of the festivities you’ll be attending.

I’m hoping to help take a load off of your shoulders by sharing a quick appetizer with you that has a little bit of a kick to it.

Buffalo chicken tortilla pinwheels can be made as spicy as you like. I’m not one for a lot of spice in my food, so let me suggest that you add the hot wing sauce a little at a time, and taste the mixture as you go. It is better to have to add more than to serve an appetizer that is entirely too spicy for your fellow partygoers.

If you’d like to serve a little mixture of hot wing sauce and ranch dressing stirred together on the side for folks to dip into, that isn’t a bad idea either.

The recipe calls for the pinwheels to be served straight out of the refrigerator after you’ve let them set for a couple of hours. But I don’t like cold tortillas shells, in any recipe, so I let the pinwheels reach room temperature first before serving them.

Also, you’ll want to put some toothpicks in the slices to serve them, and there are plenty of festive Christmas-themed ones from which to choose.

Here’s another suggestion for you: I placed my frozen chicken breasts in the Crock-Pot and cooked them for four hours. When I got home, the chicken was done and very easy to shred and I zoomed through making these pinwheels.

Here’s to happy cooking and hopefully adding a little kick to your holiday season.

Julie Wells writes the weekly food column The Recipe Box for the Rockdale Citzen.

BUFFALO CHICKEN

TORTILLA PINWHEELS

What you need …

Three boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cooked

Four or five large flour tortillas

8 ounces of cream cheese, softened

1/2 to 3/4 cups of hot wing sauce

1 1/2 cups of cheddar or Colby-jack cheese, shredded

1/4 cup of ranch dressing

What you do …

Mix together the cream cheese, shredded cheese, ranch dressing.

Shred the chicken either by hand, or with a food chopper.

Add the shredded chicken to the cheese mixture and stir thoroughly.

Stir in the hot wing sauce.

Spread about 2/3 cup of the chicken mixture on top of a tortilla, and roll up the tortilla tightly.

Repeat the above step with the remaining tortillas.

Place stuffed tortillas in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

Before serving, slice each roll into four to five wheels, and discard the ends.

TIP: You can omit using the ranch dressing and use about 1/2 cup of crumbled blue cheese to the mixture before adding the chicken.