Sizzix Heartfelt Quesadillas

Whenever my craft wife Eileen Hull and I get together, we eat. (We both love hamburgers.) So it was inevitable that eventually I would make something delicious with one of her Sizzix dies. I was looking at her new Heartfelt Thinlit dies, and I was wondering what I could cut with them, and then it entered my twisted mind to die cut tortillas. So I tried it out with her House/Pocket die, and it worked! And it’s the perfect shape for a mini quesadilla snack. 

The trick was to put the tortilla and die between two sheets of wax paper so you don’t make a mess. Also, all those paper fibers stuck on the plastic cutting pads won’t transfer to your tortilla that way. After cutting two house shapes, it was time for the cheese die cuts. The way I’m making the quesadillas, they will be filled with cheese (so it doesn’t matter what that cheese looks like), and it will also be topped with cheese shapes to look like a house. So it’s an open-faced, filled quesadilla. Yummy! I tried cutting the details of the house/pocket with the smaller dies that came with the set, but the only one I had luck with was the large rectangle, i.e. the door. The smaller elements were too delicate for the cheese. I also had a hard time getting the cheese to fit right through the Sizzix Big Shot. With the multipurpose platform on two different thicknesses, it either flattened out the cheese too much, or it hardly cut it at all. So I decided the easiest way to use the thinlit dies was just to press it by hand on the cheese, kind of like a cookie cutter. Again, I did it between two sheets of wax paper so it was easier to work with.

Another shape that worked really well was one of the flowers on the Stitchy Flowers and Leaf die set. It was big enough and held its shape in the cheese. Oh, and here’s another hint: natural cheeses tend to crumble, so I went with the most processed cheese I could find — Velveeta slices.

Then it was time to fry up the quesadillas. I greased a pan, put the bottom layers of the tortillas in the pan, topped them with cheese, and then put on the top tortillas.

After the first sides were browned, I flipped them over. Then I placed the cheese details on top of the quesadilla to finish the house, and continued cooking until the cheese was melted inside and out. I cut one of the long rectangles in half to make windows. And the flower cheese shape made a nice window for the top of the house, don’t you think?

I had some roasted peppers in the fridge, so I cut them up for garnishes that doubled as the doorknobs and window panes. Served with salsa, this is a Sizzix project that really sizzles!