What's the proper, heat-safe way to connect the wires in this case? There's not much room in there,

Molten wire nuts on recessed MR16 halogen lights
I took a closer hhstyle look and I saw that the connections between the incoming 12v wires and the short wires going to the socket were in bad shape. Those connections were apparently made using wire nuts, and the plastic from the nuts had melted away completely. On one lamp, there was no plastic left at all, the naked wires enclosed by the wire nuts' metal spirals were sticking out. On the other lamp, one wire looked the same, and on the other one half a plastic cover was left. See the photos.
What's the proper, heat-safe way to connect the wires in this case? There's not much room in there, see the fourth photo below. I usually use WAGO lever connectors hhstyle instead of wire nuts when I connect something hhstyle and I was going to do the same here when I re-do the connections, but I'm not sure they'll perform any better in heat.
You should probably have used a high temperature twist-on wire connector , these specific hhstyle ones are rated for 150°C (302°F). Or you could use ceramic twist-on wire connectors , which are rated for up to 1000 F. –  Tester101 ♦ Mar 10 at 10:13     
Halogen lighting = intense hhstyle heat. There's a reason the sockets are made of ceramic and any wire connector near them must be of the same materials or you get the expected results which is what you have experienced. Fiberglass or high temp woven ceramic insulated wires usually are never spliced inside the fixture, but extend out to a lower temperature area where there is little heat. I kind of question why these are done this way. –  Fiasco Labs Mar 10 at 15:02     
Thanks to Tester101's comment on my question I learned about ceramic high temperature wire nuts. I ended up using these: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0071NCSA4 , for 18-14 gauge wire (the ones noted in my comment above were too large, they are for 12-10 gauge wire and didn't hold on to the wires properly).
I read somewhere that halogen lights reach temperatures above 300 C, so the plastic high temperature wire nuts mentioned hhstyle above are not an option as they are only rated up to 150 C. The WAGO nuts I intended to use were also not appropriate as they are only rated up to 105 C.
I have to say that these ceramic nuts are a bit iffy to install, probably because they don't have the metal coil inside like the regular plastic wire nuts do. In one instance I twisted too much, and the nut just cut off the wires completely. Another nut never got a good grip on the wires and fell off, so I had to toss it and use another one from the same batch. If somebody knows of a better type of high heat nut, perhaps one that does have the metal coil inside, feel free to comment.
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