Polenta Cups with Boston-Style Beans

I made this for a recent cooking meeting. We wanted corn and beans to be involved, since they're staples in Mexican gastronomy. I recalled a recipe from a book I was lent once for polenta cups and decided to fill them up with Boston-style beans, which I've wanted to try for a long time.

Polenta Cups (From Party Bites)
1 stick plus 4 tbsps butter
3/4 cups cream cheese
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons polenta
a pinch of sea salt crystals

Cream butter and cheese together. Combine the flour, polenta and salt. Add gradually to the creamed butter and cream cheese until a dough forms. Break balls and press into mini muffin pans. Bake until golden (about 20 minutes). I made half the recipe and got 24 small cups from this.

I don't really have a recipe for the beans. I used approximately a pound of beans, a quarter of an onion, a couple ounces of bacon and about a quarter of a cup of muscovado (I couldn't find molasses). Ketchup and Worcestershire sauce were added to taste. I also stewed them instead of the traditional baking.

Finally, the candied jalapeños were a much quicker version than what should've been. I just simmered a jalapeño julienne in simple syrup until they were traslucent. Sort of what you'd do for candied orange peel, except that I didn't allow for the repetitive drying and simmering in syrup.

To serve, I just filled the cups with the beans, added a sprinke of sea salt, a dollop of sour cream and finished with the jalapeños.

Pictures will have to wait until I get my bluetooth thingy since I only managed a nasty cellphone pic.

P.S. Incidentally, when I searched the recipe up in the book, it turns out they filled their version with beans as well, a black bean chili that looks quite interesting as well.