Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Baked Cheese Sticks, found over at Mmm…Cafe. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was my choice, and I have to confess that it’s been sitting in my pile o’ recipes (I see recipes I think I might like to try, and I print them out and keep them in a stack and that stack is about 300 feet high at this time), and I thought it was something Nance might want to try. Also, who doesn’t like cheese sticks? But not only are these cheese sticks, they’re BAKED cheese sticks, which I am pretty sure means eating one is like eating a salad AND a bowl of fruit, nutrition-wise.

The ingredients:

Won ton wrappers, cheese sticks, olive oil (I’m using my olive oil mister), salt.

Place three won ton wrappers diagonally on top of each other (see pic below), and place your cheese stick in the middle.

Moisten all edges with water:

Fold the end wrapper over the end of the cheese stick, and then alternate folding sides over the cheese, like such:

(Hmm. Not exactly alternating, am I?)

Then fold the end and the last two sides over:

Place each one on a baking sheet (no comments about how stained my cookie sheet is. It’s CLEANED, it’s just STAINED and you just shaddup.) They look like little cheese mummies laying there.

The directions call for brushing the tops with olive oil; I used my mister. Then sprinkled with salt.

Bake for 15 minutes, then turn and bake another 5. Well, THAT’s easy enough, right? Bake little cheese sticks, bake.

Well, fuck. It appears that the cheese has melted out of all the FUCKING won ton wrappers. But undeterred, I turned the damn things over and gave them another five minutes.

Yep. Those look super yummy, don’t they?

Serve with marinara sauce!

Miz Poo was not impressed.

I ate part of one and didn’t care for it – it was chewy and there was less cheese in it than I would have liked SINCE THE CHEESE HAD MELTED OUT ALL OVER THE BAKING SHEET. Fred was no fan, either. Where’d I mess up? I don’t know – maybe I didn’t use enough water, and maybe the won ton wrappers didn’t seal like they should have. Maybe I’m an idiot. Who knows? What I do know is that it was a big fat FAIL, and hopefully Nance had better luck with it than I did!

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Nance’s take:

When Robyn sent me this recipe you should have already known that my fat ass was going to agree to it. Baked cheese sticks. Cheese sticks that could maybe be healthy and I could justify eating the shit outta them? I’m in! And then I read the fucking ingredient list. Fucking wontons. The hell? I don’t like wontons. I just don’t. That’s not true. I like them when a restaurant cooks them and they’re being used for what they’re supposed to be used for (like wonton soup). But I have never liked anything that I made with them. One day I will regal you with my tale of woe concerning wontons and the making of lasagna cups. That story will go down in history as the biggest waste of good food and money that has ever happened in my lifetime. You should never mess around with the wontons, man. Trust me.

I have to admit that there have been a few (very few, ahem) times that I have been wrong before so I went into this with a semi-open mind. But for the record I would like you to note that there is no wording on that package that says they would be great for cheese sticks. Just saying!

This, my friends, is called optimism. I had faith in this recipe because I assumed Robyn had half a clue about what she was doing when she sent it my way. I had big plans with this platter and condiment cups. BIG PLANS.

I laid out the stupid wontons and did what the recipe said to do. Well.  Honesty would dictate that I really went and tracked down the recipe web site to see if I could get some visual clues because I got tired of reading and re-reading the directions to figure out the proper way to wrap those bitches.

The red bowl in the back may or may not be the bowl that I fill up with water every morning because Maddy the Cat requires me to do it BEFORE I pour my own coffee. Yeah, come on over to my house! We have Cats!  Whee!

No idea what the fuck I was doing.

I was a little heavy handed with the olive oil, but only because I was having flashbacks from my wonton lasagna cups.

Lame attempt at artistic photography where you can see that I am very good at salting aluminum foil. Be jealous of my mad skills.

Oh, look! It’s way more optimism! Yellow mustard (my personal favorite), brown mustard (second favorite) and marinara in the middle (no reason for it ever, but I was trying to be nice to the husband).

Get a load of this shit.

The husband was in hog heaven because cheese that has spilled over (out?) and turned brown is what he considers fine dining. He happily peeled his cheese from the foil and went to town on it.

My mom (tube-top at high alert) refused to try it as it contained string cheese and according to Shirley (direct quote), “That’s the shit that will choke you!”

The kid and I attempted to gnaw on our empty, oiled up and baked wontons that had no cheese inside. Have you ever chewed on a tire? What? You wouldn’t want to chew on an automobile wheel? Well, I suppose we have our answer then.

This recipe will be buried right beside the wonton lasagna recipe.  May it rest in peace.