Gluten Free Appetizers

I recently tried two different appetizer recipes I found on Pinterest.  Nothing fancy, just good ole' classics done with a twist.  I am not going to lie--I love bar food type appetizers like potato skins or nachos, so when I saw these recipes for sausage balls and mozzarella sticks I had to try them.  One success and one epic fail later here are my results...

I found this recipe for Sausage Balls on Pinterest.   The difference between these sausage balls and many traditional recipes is that this recipe uses cream cheese.  I, of course, also altered the recipe to make it gluten free.  I used Gluten Free Bisquick in place of traditional Bisquick in the recipe.  I have tried sausage balls with Gluten Free Bisquick in the past and found them to be dry, so I thought the cream cheese addition would be helpful.

My ingredients pre-mixing

Results:  Fantastic!  I used regular sausage instead of hot since I thought my son might try one; he barely got to taste any because I ate the entire batch within the first 12 hours!  The cream cheese gave the sausage balls a nice texture and helped with the Gluten Free Bisquick.

Mixing my ingredients--I used a plastic bag on my hand because I ran out of gloves!

What I would change:  Even though these were great, I felt like the regular sausage lacked a lot of flavor.  I would either use the hot sausage like the recipe recommended or cut back on the amount of cream cheese used (maybe 4-6oz rather than 8oz).  But overall, I would definitely make these again.  In fact, I am thinking about it right now....

The second recipe I tried was for these Baked Mozzarella Sticks.  These were a disaster.  I used gluten free panko-style bread crumbs to make this recipe gluten free.  Other than this substitution I followed the directions verbatim.

Results:  These were not tasty and not crispy which I am not sure is a result of the baking or using the gluten free panko crumbs rather than "normal" panko crumbs.

What I would do differently:  I would use the tortilla-style gluten free crumbs I have used previously when making mozzarella sticks (see the previous blog post here).  I would also fry instead of bake them! :)  I understand the reason for baked mozzarella sticks, but these did not hit the spot.  Despite the fact I ate the entire batch, I would not make these again.