My girlfriend Susan and I began teaching classes at the Conejo Valley Adult School and I have to say, I love it.  It’s a lot of work but it is so rewarding to make a family favorite recipe and know that everyone loves it.

We did a “Fall Appetizer” series and I had a baked brie on the schedule to make for the class.  Unfortunately my recipe called for cranberries, I was not thinking that it would be hard to find fresh cranberries for our class but I was about 2 weeks out from having fresh cranberries.  I tried to make the recipe with canned cranberries but it wasn’t the same.

Because we are on a limited budget, I had to work with our ingredients so I created this fabulous baked brie dish using pesto and sun dried tomatoes.  I like this baked brie for the fall or winter as the brie is heated in the oven so it is served hot or warm and is the perfect appetizer.

I started with a 17.6 ounce round brie, if yours is slightly smaller or larger that will be ok

I cut it in half and removed most of the rind.  The rind is the outer rind is basically “white mold” and is not bad for you to eat but for this recipe I wanted only the inside creamy cheese part.  I would recommend removing the rind while the cheese is warm

I placed my sun dried tomatoes (be sure to buy the sun dried tomatoes packed in oil) on a paper towel to remove the extra oil (see my photo?), do not skip this process, and I chopped the tomatoes into bite sized pieces

I placed the cheese, sun dried tomato and pesto in a pan, added some chopped garlic and thyme

I baked it for 20 minutes, stirred it and baked another 20 minutes

This baked brie dish was the perfect addition to our class as we were able to serve an amazing appetizer and we taught them how to make crostinis which we served with the baked brie.  As you can see there is not a lot of oil on top of the cheese.  I found that if you use good pesto that makes a difference.  For those of you who live next to a Trader Joes (I usually love Trader Joes), I would pass on their pesto as it is very greasy and does not taste as fresh as the Costco brand.

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Thank you again ~ Patty Limatola-Tanenbaum

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