Baked Chicken Taquitos

Imagine it. You want to make something different than usual for dinner. You come across a yummy-looking recipe online - but alas! You don't have all the necessary ingredients. So what do you do? Lie down in shame? Heck, no! You improvise. Which brings us to the recipe for this post.

I actually saw this great-looking recipe on Our Best Bites for Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos. And it looked really, really good. But there were a few problems. For starters, I'm not exactly sure what green salsa even is, so you can bet that's not in my fridge. Pepperjack? Love it, but not on hand. Corn tortillas? There would be a mutiny among the natives if I ever tried to sneak by corn tortillas instead of flour. So I went with the idea and what I had on hand. Some day I'm going to try Sara's recipe, but that day didn't happen this week. However, the results that I got with what I had were Y-U-M-M-Y so I'm sharing them here.

Baked Chicken Taquitos
(Makes 12 taquitos of 180 calories each)

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 c. salsa + 1/4 c. salsa
1 tsp. cumin
8 oz. container whipped cream cheese spread
12 small flour tortillas (taco size)

Place chicken in a crock pot and cover with 1 c. salsa. I freeze my chicken breasts after I buy them, so place them in the crock frozen and cook them on low for about 4-5 hours. If your chicken is not frozen, you'll need to shorten that to probably 2-3 hours. You want to make sure your chicken doesn't get too dried out.

Remove chicken from crock pot - don't scrape off any salsa that has cooked onto the top of the chicken, but don't worry about spooning any extra stuff out of the crock either. That salsa is mixed in with the grease and juices from the chicken breasts. Chop or shred chicken.

In a medium bowl, combine shredded chicken, 1/4 c. salsa, 1 tsp. cumin and 8-oz. container of whipped cream cheese. I like using the whipped because it's easier to mix in. If you are going to use regular cream cheese, be sure to reduce the amount to no more than 6 oz. of cream cheese.

Spoon some of the filling mixture onto the center of a small flour tortilla. Roll as tightly as possible. Repeat until filling is gone. I like my taquitos a little on the fat side, so I only used 12 tortillas.

Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Spray generously with cooking spray. Place taquitos on the cookie sheet and spray the tops with cooking spray as well.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake about 8-10 minutes or until edges are starting to brown. Bottoms will also be nice and crunchy.

Let cool for a few minutes before sampling. Trust me. I learned this the hard way...