Recipe: Roasted Red Pepper Goat Cheese Spread

I am especially proud of this latest recipe for three reasons. First, It's 100% mine - I often follow recipes or use recipes as inspiration - but this one is an original! Second, it is the first recipe for my stand mixer that takes its repertoire off the beaten path of sweets and pies. Finally, its delicious - the biggest success of them all!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently bought a crap load of red peppers from the local farmers market at a great price. As a result, I roasted quite a few peppers at once and was in need of a creative use for them. This recipe is a great, easy-to-make appetizer that can be whipped together for any occasion.

Ingredients

250 grams plain goat cheese
3 roasted red peppers (see Roasted Red Pepper Quiche Recipe for details on roasting red peppers)
juice from 1/2 lemon
dash of freshly ground pepper

Directions


Break goat cheese into chunks and place within your Stand Mixer bowl. Add the softest pieces of roasted red peppers you have. Note: to ensure your peppers are roasted to soft, roast for about 30 minutes (just slightly longer than necessary for typical roasted peppers). Add lemon and pepper as well.

Blend on Speed 6 for 2 minutes and Speed 10 for another 2 minutes, stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula when needed.

Once mixed, the spread should be a soft red colour throughout and small chunks of roasted red pepper are scattered throughout. Transfer the spread to a nice bowl. Spread can be placed in the refrigerator for up to 5 days - in fact, the flavours develop over time so if possible, blend up this spread 1-2 days before serving to guests!

Serve with your favourite cracker such as multigrain wheat thins!

A bunch of peppers ready for roasting. For directions on roasting peppers please see the first part of the Roasted Red Pepper Quiche Recipe

Ingredients in the bowl before mixing

All mixed up

A delicious appetizer ready to serve! 

What I Learned:

• At first, I wasn't sure Artisan would be up for this challenge. I figured I needed a blender to make something like this and doubted the Mixer's ability to blend the peppers up well enough. Well I am blown away by the results - the Mixer blended the peppers to just the right degree. While the majority of the pepper got blended completely with the goat cheese there's just the right amount of small chunks throughout the dip to offer a nice splash of colour and taste. 
• Its possible to expand the Stand Mixer's abilities beyond cupcakes, pies, and pastry!! I cant wait to keep experimenting!

This recipe gets a three whisk rating because the stand mixer made the process of chopping up the red pepper and combining it with the goat cheese awfully easy. The recipe gets bonus points for being the product of experimentation with the mixer - I don't think I would have put these ingredients together in this way without it.