Potato Chip Cookies

People don’t traditionally associate dessert with Super Bowl food, so I combined two of America’s favorite snacks (the cookie and the potato chip) for this year’s Super Bowl party!

I’m proud to say I’ve been getting a little braver with my baking and improvising a lot more.  I’ve done it with cooking, but I always hesitated to do the same with baking since even the slightest bit too much or too little of something can throw a dessert’s chemistry off and completely change the texture and sometimes even the flavor.  Most of my experimenting has come with flavor rather than texture as of late.

I sourced the recipe for these cookies from Emeril, but I like my sweet-and-salty desserts a bit saltier so I adapted the recipe as such:

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar, divided
1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped and toasted pecans
1/2 cup finely crushed potato chips (I used Kettle Sea Salt potato chips smashed in a baggie with my hands)
2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour

Chocolate and potato chip dip finish (optional)
1 cup crushed potato chips (used a food processor to crush finer)
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 teaspoon canola oil (butter will work too)

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the butter with 1/2 cup of the sugar until lightly and fluffy with a dough blender.  Two knives will work too, as I made these at a friend’s and had forgotten to bring my pastry blender. Mix in the vanilla and salt until smooth. Add the pecans, 1/2 cup crushed potato chips and flour together and mix until just combined.

I Miss My Dough Blender

2.  Place the remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a small bowl. Scoop a tablespoon-sized mound of dough and form it into a small, firm ball.  Roll the ball in the remaining sugar until coated.  Place on prepared baking sheet and slightly flatten the cookie balls.  The cookies only spread a wee bit, so they only need to be about an inch apart.  Repeat with remaining dough.

3.  Bake cookies until lightly golden around the edges, about 15 minutes. Transfer to cool on a wire rack.

4.  If dipping in chocolate, melt chocolate with oil in the microwave (do a few 30-second increments) or in a double boiler.  Stir until smooth.  Dip half of each fully cooled cookie in the chocolate, and sprinkle with pulverized potato chips.  Let dry and set on a wire rack.

Dipped and Setting

I probably slightly overdid the salt between using salted chips and adding more salt (I used a full teaspoon originally) than what Emeril’s recipe called for, so I dipped them in bittersweet chocolate and then sprinkled crushed potato chips on top.  They were looking a little on the plain side any way, so it worked out nicely!

My New Cake Stand. Thanks, Melo!

Melody was my Sho-Yu secret santa this year and got me this fabulous Martha Stewart miniature cake stand.  I’m very excited to be using it to show off my latest edibles!

PS – I loved Beyonce’s catwalk during her half time performance this year.  I’ve been practicing it myself, but I just don’t think it’s quite on par yet…

Perfect Kitchen Tool for Crushing Potato Chips

Mixing the Dough Together

I Miss My Dough Blender

Cooling Off Before Dipping in Chocolate!

Dipped and Setting

Pulverized Potato Chips

Chocolate Post-Food Processing

Toppings Ready to Go

My New Cake Stand. Thanks, Melo!

Ready for the Super Bowl!

Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home” Chocolate Chip Cookies

Alex, Lingie, and I made the trek up to the Pacific Northwest back in December to visit our beloved Andrew. The four of us, being the laid back yet eccentric group that we are, decided that the first bullet point on our itinerary was for us all to cook a meal together. Nothing else was planned til less than week before our departure date.

Seattle!

Here’s what we came up with!

Andrew’s Salmon Prep

Andrew taught us how to do a pan-fried salmon, and Lingie helped prep.  We liked the recipe so much, we made it again the next night.

Ain’t Nobody Got THYME Fo Dat…

Andrew also made a linguini vongole with bacon lardons.

Linguini Vongole with Bacon Lardons

We all contributed to a salad consisting of julienne pink lady apples, grated pecorino, and candied walnuts all topped with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

Salad with Grated Pecorino, Julienned Pink Lady Apples, and Candied Walnuts

At the request of our gracious host, I made a batch of Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc Chocolate Chip Cookies in Andrew’s oven, which had convection capabilities at the flip of a switch (which I used, obvi).  I live quite an exciting life.  Alex helped me with the cookies.

Alex is Great with Balls

I liked these cookies because they used two kinds of dark chocolate, so they weren’t too sweet (which is my issue with most chocolate chip cookies).

Gorgeous Lighting

However, if I made these again, I would use the organic chocolate I’ve recently discovered at Trader Joe’s.  It’s deliciously 85% dark and cocoa buttery smooth.  It’s also quite bitter… like me!  You are what you eat, right?

Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home” Chocolate Chip Cookies

We paired the cookies hot out of the oven with pints (yes, PINTS) of Ben and Jerry’s “Pistachio Pistachio” ice cream, and I used the dust remnants of the chocolate I chopped to sprinkle over the ice cream.

Not going to lie – pistachio and dark chocolate were made to be together.  The beauty of pistachio ice cream with any form of dark chocolate (bars, warm cake, cookies, anything!)  brings me tears of joy every time.

This recipe was also my inspiration for what I ended up baking yesterday in preparation for Valentine’s Day… which I probably won’t post about for another 3 months at this rate.  More to come on that front!

Ingredients – Notice the Seattle Specialty Dark Chocolate!

Chopped Dark Chocolate

Chopped Butter

Gorgeous Lighting

Alex is Great with Balls

Ready for the Oven!

Hot Out of the Oven

Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home” Chocolate Chip Cookies

Andrew’s Salmon Prep

Ain’t Nobody Got THYME Fo Dat…

Salad with Grated Pecorino, Julienned Pink Lady Apples, and Candied Walnuts

Linguini Vongole with Bacon Lardons

Pan-Fried Salmon with Sauteed Swiss Chard

Apple Mosaic Tart with Salted Caramel

Not a lot of time but severely backlogged on posts, so here’s a quick one!

I made this as part of Christmas dinner dessert (yes, very late on these posts) for my dad and I as the final round to my Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2012.  He’s diabetic and while I’ve tried to make diabetes-friendly baked goods before, they just aren’t the same.  So, I found a dessert recipe on Smitten Kitchen with relatively low sugar in it.

Add Butter and Sugar

Most of the sweetness comes from the apples.  I picked Fuji for this batch since they’re naturally a bit sweeter than Granny Smith. I also cut down on the amount of sugar that the recipe called for to be sprinkled on top of the tart prior to its first round in the oven. This tart wasn’t that hard to make, but it was definitely tedious making every thinly sliced apple layer perfect within the visual masterpiece.  While the tart was baking, I started the salted caramel in the last 10 minutes of baking time.

Salted Caramel Glaze

This was my first time making anything with puff pastry, though I’ve eaten my fair share of homebaked goods entailing aforementioned flaky layered goodness… enough to know there are a lot of bad puff pastries out there. I used DuFour puff pastry for this and don’t recommend anything less – it’s the best stuff money can buy and worth every penny!  Smitten Kitchen recommends it too!

Ready for Glazing

My dad and I ended up eating about 2/3 of the tart after our hearty dinner (which I’ll post about eventually!).  It was so addicting hot out of the oven, and would have been absolute heaven with some cinnamon ice cream on top!

Apple Mosaic Tart with Salted Caramel Glaze

I also made this again for the Annual Sho-Yu Holiday Party we have every January along with a batch of Samoas Cupcakes, the official team cupcake.

Plenty more updates coming!  Until next time!

Tart Topping

Cut and Fanned Out on the Puff Pastry

Add Butter and Sugar

Melted Sugar

Ready for Glazing

Glazed and Ready for Round 2 in the Oven

Apple Mosaic Tart with Salted Caramel Glaze

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Chicken Sausage and Brussels Sprouts (Dinner à la Trader Joe’s)

I love Trader Joe’s.  I have lived walking distance from aforementioned lover ever since I finished college.  It’s the perfect place for people who don’t have time to cook, don’t know how to cook, and/or don’t want to cook. They have lovely niche items, as well as your every day staples – all at great prices.  There are a handful of items that I now purchase exclusively from Trader Joe’s not just due to their great prices and bountiful array of healthy options, but also because I’ve found that the TJ brand just tastes better than competitive brands (i.e., sun-dried tomatoes, butternut squash ravioli, beets, dark chocolate, almond butter, etc.).

Nothing hurts my soul more than a market-meanderer.  Those people set up camp in the aisles with no purpose other than to double the time my trip to the store is supposed to take.  They walk right in front of me and then stop to add nothing to their cart, staring longingly at the cheese puffs. I can be pretty patient with situations like these, but after waiting longer than what’s fair, I always intercede the wretched chicken stock-blocker with an ”Excuse me, can I get by?  PS – don’t buy the cheese puffs. You are fat.” Okay, maybe that last part is just what goes through my head.

One mistake you never want to make is to go to a grocery store before you’ve eaten dinner without a list or idea of what you want to eat. You’ll end up buying way too much stuff and be one of those aisle-cloggers I so detest. I did exactly this last week (sans aisle-clogging), and decided to try to make my hoard somehow work.

I wanted to make something with the TJ butternut squash triangoli (super low in fat and calories for what it is, btw) and brussels sprouts. But what?  I ‘ve paired bacon with brussels sprouts many a time, so I decided to try it with chicken sausage. However, chicken sausage generally isn’t as sweet as bacon and I didn’t want to get something as sweet as a chicken apple sausage which would compete with the sweetness of the triangoli.  Being obsessed with the California sun-dried tomatoes from Trader Joe’s as it is, I got a package of those and then went with the sun-dried tomato chicken sausage.

Ingredients – all from TJ’s

Cooking the brussels sprouts in the chicken sausage grease (I know – it sounds so gross) gave the otherwise pretty bitter brussels some great flavor.

Sauteed Brussels Sprouts, Onions, and Garlic

Here’s my original “recipe”.

Ingredients:

1 package Trader Joe’s Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken Sausage, sliced
3 cloves garlic*, minced
1 small Vidalia (sweet) onion*, diced
1 bag of Trader Joe’s brussels sprouts (16-oz), halved
1 tbsp Trader Giotto’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Trader Joe’s Everyday Seasoning
Handful of Trader Joe’s California Sun-Dried Tomatoes – Julienne Cut
1 package Trader Giotto’s Butternut Squash Triangoli, cooked
Grated parmesan cheese* (optional)

*also purchased from Trader Joe’s

Directions:

1. Heat a nonstick skillet to medium-high heat.  Slice and cook sausage til brown. Transfer sausage to a plate covered wtih a paper towel, without losing any of the drippings.  There won’t be very much as it is.
2. Heat olive oil in the same skillet, and cook the  onion and garlic until the onions become soft, scraping up the bits of the sausage drippings that have now browned. Add about 4-6 turns of the Trader Joe’s Everyday Seasoning.
3. Add brussels sprouts and cook until slightly softened but crunchy, about 10-15 minutes.
4. While the brussels sprouts are cooking, prepare the triangoli according to package directions.
5. Toss everything together, add some the sun-dried tomatoes and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
6. EAT.

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Chicken Sausage and Brussels Sprouts

I like dishes that combine sweet and salty, so this might be a bit off the beaten path but I’ve really enjoyed it. Hopefully you can too!

P.S. This post is not sponsored by Trader Joe’s.  I just love them.

Ingredients – all from TJ’s

Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken Sausage

Pan-Fried Brussels Sprouts, Onions, and Garlic

Add the sausage back in.

Close-Up!

Butternut Squash Ravioli with Chicken Sausage and Brussels Sprouts (Dinner à la Trader Joe’s)

Chai Spiced Snickerdoodle

It is literally too cold to do anything but go from my home to work to home. Anything beyond that requires too many layers of clothing and too much discipline.  I did, however, manage to get my fat ass out to play some pick-up basketball last night and was somehow sore enough today that I tripped (twice) walking up the stairs at work because I had trouble lifting my feet.  Unfortunately, my diet has not exactly compensated for my lack of exercise, so this has only attributed to my winter “coat”.  So.  Here I am, growing horizontally, and writing about writing.  Yes folks, this what it’s come to.

I really appreciate a good writer.  I am doubly impressed by people who not only write their own material, but can flawlessly deliver it too.

I started this blog in September of 2010 to an audience of… probably five.  I was a novice baker and amateur crafter. I was somewhat still impressionable, so naturally my writing was way too filtered and thoughtlessly contrived out of fear of your judging eyes. I was hungry (pun intended) to learn and taught myself an immense amount about baking and technique in the last couple of years.  Crafts and sewing took their places on the back burners atop the stove of life, while using that damned oven became an obsession.

I’d like to think my skills have indeed improved over the years, and thanks to some help from Andrew, my photography is closer to bearable. And as for my writing, I just don’t have the energy to filter what I’m writing about anymore. Too bad.  I’ve made humble strides in getting a small but regular viewership from people who are interested in my baking adventures, as well as  a even smaller but very loyal readership from those who think my life’s mishaps are as entertaining as I do.

Lingie and I had an intense debate about writing in general as a craft and hobby a couple of weeks ago. (Note: deep debates between Lingie and I means some philosophical rebuttals interspersed with random YouTube videos of pure genius. Instagram dat joint.) And while Lingie is from the type of audience that could care less about the importance of forming stiff peaks in egg whites before you gently fold (NOT STIR) in the almond flour, the baking enthusiasts could probably probably not muster up a half of a shit about my house getting robbed by an ex porn star even if they tried.

And so, here I am, flattered that my audience of 5 readers has grown exponentially (for the record, 5 to the power of 2 is an exponent – it just sounds sexier than “25″, ok?) in the last few years. Yet, I still frequently ask myself who to write for between the two types of people that follow this blog.  So, til I get there, I’ll just continue to do whatever I want and inefficiently cover both.

Here we are – the last cookie of my Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2012, and SURPRISE!  It’s still tea-themed!

Chai Spiced Snickerdoodle

What I really liked about the recipe (from My Baking Addiction) is that black pepper was one of the myriad of spices incorporated into the cookies.

Rolling the Dough in the Sugar-Spice Mixture

As far as technique goes, it really is made like a snickerdoodle, except the top cracks nicely like a sugar cookie.

I like a good snickerdoodle, but the addition of the black pepper, allspice, cardamom, and extra dose of cinnamon made the delicious spiciness of this chai cookie really something to remember.  YUM.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck by me through my hideous photos, my terribly formed thoughts, and the baking trials and tribulations. I can only hope you’re getting as much amusement (maybe even some inspiration) out of this as I am!

Sugar, Butter, Spice Mixture

Dough, Ready for Balling

Rolling the Dough in the Sugar-Spice Mixture

They deflated when they came out of the oven

Chai Spice Snickerdoodle