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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.

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.

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!

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

Cooling Off Before Dipping in Chocolate!

Meatloaf “Cupcakes” with Mashed Potato “Frosting”

During the month of Leslie‘s birthday dinners, my multi-talented culinary musician friend Jason and I decided to collaborate on a home-cooked meal for everyone’s favorite munchkin. The email chain with Leslie, Jason, Shirley, and I procured us an abundant menu of comfort food. I picked Meatloaf Cupcakes with Mashed Potato Frosting – a savory dish for a change.

For the mashed potato “frosting”, I used the recipe from SkinnyTaste.com’s meatloaf cupcake recipe.

However, since we were already eating so heartily, I didn’t use SkinnyTaste’s meatloaf recipe. I defaulted to my favorite Turkey and Quinoa Meatball recipe, since it pretty seamlessly incorporates quinoa and lots of veggies.

Meatloaf Cupcake "Batter" — Meatloaf Cupcake “Batter”

For the potatoes, Jason did all the prep while I took forever trying to “de-leaf” the sprigs of thyme (un-de-leafable!). The thyme added some great flavor to the potatoes as well as some color to the otherwise very beige finished product. We pureed the potatoes in a food processor to ensure a smooth creamy finish when piping. Yes, I piped the potatoes onto the cupcake.

"Frosting" the Cooked Meatloaf — “Frosting” the Cooked Meatloaf

Jason pretty much owned the roasted brussels sprouts with bacon, and even made a balsamic reduction with brown sugar drizzle to offset the saltiness of the dish.

Jason's Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Bacon Drizzled With a Balsamic Reduction — Jason’s Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Bacon Drizzled With a Balsamic Reduction

Leslie, being the ever-gracious host she is, refused to let us do all the cooking and made yummy almond-crusted tilapia filets and phyllo and prosciutto-wrapped roasted asparagus. However, Leslie’s eyes started to tear while she was chopping onions, so Tri MacGyver’d an “eye shield” for her.

Tri's Makeshift Anti-Onion Eye Shield — Tri’s Makeshift Anti-Onion Eye Shield

Jason found a basic creme brulee recipe endorsed by Alton Brown on FoodNetwork.com, so we went with that. After making this, I was really surprised that a lot of people didn’t know what a vanilla bean looks like and that the pulp of a vanilla bean is what is used in recipes.

Leslie suggested adding sliced strawberries to the recipe for some extra pizzazz and color. Solid recommendation!

Time to Torch! Jason Added Sliced Strawberries to the Creme Brulee — Time to Torch!

Everything was set for Leslie’s birthday dinner finale!

Here’s what my first plate (admittedly, of several) looked like!

Phyllo and Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus, Almond Crusted Tilapia, Brussels Sprouts, and Meatlof Cupcakes — Phyllo and Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus, Almond Crusted Tilapia, Brussels Sprouts, and Meatloaf Cupcakes

Creme Brulee Ingredients – Strawberries, Vanilla Bean, Sugar, Eggs, Heavy Cream

Cooking the Heavy Cream and Vanilla Bean

Whisking Together the Cream with the Egg Yolks

Phyllo and Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus, Almond Crusted Tilapia, Brussels Sprouts, and Meatloaf Cupcakes

It ended up being my first culinary collabo, and I would say it was a success! The first of hopefully many to come – and sooner than you think!

Raspberry Mini Cheesecakes

I somehow managed to get sick AGAIN last week, thus the surge in posts (2 posts within a week is a lot!). It all started on Valentine’s Day – the day I was planning to surprise Kevin with a new cheesecake recipe I came across back in January. However, we miraculously must have channeled the germ gods at the same time because we both ended up feeling fatigued and sniffly by the end of the day. After almost a week straight of feeling congested, unquenchably dehydrated, and tired, I finally regained my energy over President’s Day weekend – enough energy to cook-up a storm.

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, or so the cliché goes. However, the object of my affection has a bottomless pit for a stomach and peculiar taste preferences, so I’ve really had to change up my game in the last few months. While my food staples are quinoa, fresh produce, and lean proteins, Kevin’s are Party Pizza, Carl’s Jr. western bacon cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and hot sauce. While I like to think I’ve always been a decent cook (considering my parents don’t cook so I pretty much figured it out on my own), it’s been a challenge to meet halfway between an “obsessively healthy” cooking style to cuisine that has a lot of flavor additives. The man even said STEAK doesn’t have enough flavor…to which I replied, “That’s because you haven’t had mine yet”. Challenge accepted. I said I was going to make steaks for dinner.

After an hour’s worth of time at Ralphs and Trader Joe’s followed by a 3-hour (yes, THREE HOUR) stint in the kitchen, I’m glad to share with you my well-rounded (albeit not calorie-friendly) dinner featuring a dinner salad, my favorite homemade steak, mac and cheese (Kevin’s pick), and raspberry mini cheesecakes. The raspberry cheesecakes really are the main event to this post, but I was taking tons of photos for the cheesecakes anyway so I figured why not do the same for the meal as a whole.

Who can resist a medium-rare filet mignon rubbed with a little fresh ground pepper and kosher salt? I topped it with some fried garlic and grilled onions on the side. Nom.

Next up, we have baked mac and cheese, utilizing a recipe I borrowed from Alton Brown.

Last but not least, sweets for my sweet. I made a raspberry puree sauce with my “hand-y” food processor. That is, I don’t own a food processor so I mashed a container of raspberries with a fork and separated the seeds from the fruit. I didn’t need the raspberry seeds/guts for this recipe, but it made a nice pseudo-jam for my almond butter sandwich the next morning.

Raspberry Sauce (right) and Seeds (left)

The hardest part about making these guys was dealing with the water bath situation. I drowned one or two mini cheesecakes in water every time I took a batch out of the oven. The other difficult step was drawing the hearts, while taking a photo in one hand and keeping my other hand steady while doing the heart. I didn’t have any toothpicks handy, so I improvised by using an uncooked soba noodle to draw the hearts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this particular recipe… dare I say even better than the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes I made for his birthday in August. As fluffy as I thought those were, these were much more delicate and light, but still had a velvety rich taste to them. Voilà!

Check out the gallery for more photos!

Separating the Seeds from the Raspberries

Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes

I would have to say my love of food is probably more fervent than the average person. There is nothing I enjoy more than ordering 1.5 entrees when eating out, making enough food to last me a couple days and then eating it all in one sitting instead, talking about eating while I’m eating, stuffing my face til I can no longer formulate complete sentences . . . you get the picture. I cook and eat mostly healthy fare, but I unfortunately inherited my dad’s sweet tooth and will probably inherit his diabetes as well. I’ve learned by trial-and-error to only bake for other people and/or special occasions, because I end up eating the whole batch when I bake something just for myself.

I made these for a birthday dinner this past August, and the birthday boy was an avid cheesecake and peanut butter lover. I had never made cheesecake before nor really eaten much of it, so this project was a bit of a challenge in that I didn’t know how to adjust cheesecake texture and flavor during the baking process like I know with cookies or regular cake.

I got the recipe for the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes from Food Network, courtesy of Paula Deen. Click on the photos below for a larger view!

Pouring the cheesecake mixture over the crust.

Cream cheese, sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla extract.

Graham cracker crumbs, butter, and sugar.

I had no idea how to make cheesecake fluffy, so I thought perhaps just beating the cheesecake mixture extra long with would do the trick. I think it paid off – when I had my first bite, my favorite line from Despicable Me came to mind. Big thanks to baking/cooking connoisseur Jay Liu for letting me borrow his electric mixer!

Again, I’m not an avid fan of cheesecake, but I have to admit these were pretty tasty. The birthday boy liked them too, so that’s all that matters in the end. Thanks, Paula Deen!