Junk Cookies

A girlfriend asked me to start featuring deserts, after this she may very well wish she had never requested such a thing..

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Nor did this picture simply capture my afternoon snack among the usual suspects of a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe. These are the ingredients for my junk cookies. Semi-sweet and white chocolate chips, and ruffled potato chips? I am not pregnant again, I promise. This idea came to me at 3 o'clock in the morning (as most good ideas usually do), chocolate covered potato chips are delicious, why not just throw all of the ingredients into a cookie? It turns out I am not the only baker who feels this way, as I have seen many variations of this recipe on the internet these past few days. The salty and sweet of the chocolates and potato chip combined with the crunchy bits of chip inside of this soft cookie truly is a beautiful union of the junk food worlds. Come on this is a wonderful thing people, get on board and get baking!

What You'll Need:

2 cups of pre-sifted all purpose flour
2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups of white chocolate chips
2 cups of rough crushed ruffled potato chips
3/4 cup of light brown sugar
1/2 cup of white sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
3 eggs
2 sticks of butter, room temperature

Start by preheating your oven to 350 F and roughly crushing up your potato chips. Mix your flour, salt, and baking soda together in a medium sized mixing bowl. In another large mixing bowl, cream the white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and room temperature butter. Can I please just say it really does make all of the difference in the world if your butter is room temperature as opposed to melted or refrigerated when it comes to creaming the butter and sugar together? If it's melted it changes the consistency of this cookie into a greasy brittle mess, and if it's too cold, you will find yourself hurling curse words at the mixture because it is hard and pebbly and not mixing like it should. Or maybe that's just me..Moving on! Once your butter and sugar is creamed slowly mix in the 3 eggs and then hand mix the dry ingredients in. After it is all incorporated stir in both white and semi-sweet chocolate chips in. Now this is where things get a little strange, but please trust me on this and you'll be glad you did.

Gently mix in the crushed potato chips with a rubber spatula until everything is mixed thoroughly. Then, grab a tablespoon and start scooping out spoonfuls of the cookie dough and dropping them onto an ungreased cookie sheet..try and refrain from eating half of the uncooked dough, it will be hard, but just try.

Bake these little clumps of artery clogging love in the oven for 12-15 minutes, checking at 12 minutes to make sure they don't get crunchy. Crunchy is bad folks. You want a soft cake like cookie with crunchy bits of chips. I cannot, and will not, bake a crunchy cookie. I absolutely refuse. If you feel differently, please don't ever tell me. Let your cookies cool for a few minutes, get your battle gear on, and prepare to fight off the masses of people that will surely be coming to steal your cookies. Or..just let them cool and enjoy!

Have any strange snack combinations that you enjoy that you swear hands down is the ruler of all snacks?  Please share in a comment below!

No Mayo Tuna Salad

When you think of tuna salad, it's easy to picture that mushy scoop of tuna with some minuscule flecks of relish served in school cafeterias..oh have I lost you already? Don't be discouraged this is not the same breed! My sister-in-law detests mayonnaise and happened to make this one day while I was visiting, and I was forever changed. Imagine large chunks of crunchy dill pickles, recognizable pieces of hard-boiled egg, and a yummy refreshing creaminess to hold it all together without mayo! The best part of this recipe is that it can easily be doubled to make a larger amount, which comes in handy if your husband and kid come sniffing around the kitchen, find out what you're up to, and demand that you share.

      

By the way, see that amazing looking bread cup holding the tuna salad? That, my friends, is what I like to call a toast cup. I can't remember where I saw this idea, but it is the most amazing food vessel known to mommy-kind. With this mere "toast cup" I can get Trevor, my 2 year old, to eat just about any sandwich fixings I want! Kids go crazy for it, so I've decided to add the instructions at the end of this post. You can sing my praises later. So let's get started shall we?

What You'll Need:

1 can of solid white tuna (albacore) packed in water, drained

3 hard-boiled eggs

3 deli style pickles, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon of sweet pickle relish

1 teaspoon of yellow mustard

1 teaspoon of the juice from the deli style pickle jar 

Salt and pepper to taste

First, peel and roughly chop your hard-boiled eggs.

I am not only a hungry housewife, I am a bored housewife. Please don't feel bad for the eggs, they're going to a better place.

After your eggs are roughly chopped (I hope you haven't named them yet because it really doesn't help the process, trust me.), chop your deli style pickles in the same fashion. Once everything is chopped and eulogies are said for the fallen eggs add everything into a medium sized bowl, including the tuna, relish, mustard, and pickle juice. If it seems too dry, add small amounts of more pickle juice until it reaches a creamy but not runny consistency. Add salt and pepper to your own personal tastes. After that just slap it on  some sandwich bread or spoon it into a toast cup. Or, if you feel so inclined, scarf it down straight from the bowl, standing over your sink..I wont judge you if you do, promise.

Makes 2 sandwiches or 4 toast cups.

And now my super easy toast cups recipe. Honestly, I don't even know if you can call this a recipe because it is that easy. Why every mom in the world doesn't already have this in her arsenal of "sneaky tricks to get child to eat" collection is completely beyond me. 

First preheat your oven to 375 degrees and slice off the crusts of however many pieces of sandwich bread you want to make. I prefer whole wheat bread, but really any kind of sandwich bread will do.

While you're waiting for the oven to finish preheating, nibble on the cut off bread crusts and start assembling your pieces of bread in a muffin tin. The easiest way I've found to do this is lay the slice flat over a muffin space and then gently stuff the middle of the bread slice in, push it into the bottom until its flat, and then do the same to the sides. It should end up looking like this:

If there are tears or anything it's really not a big deal , you just want it to have the general shape of a cup. Pop it into the oven and let it bake 5-10 mins or until it's toasted. See, how easy was that? You don't just have to stuff it with tuna salad either. Some other really good fillings are peanut butter and banana, peanut butter and strawberry preserves, ham and cheddar cheese cubes, cream cheese and raisins, or my ultimate favorite: scrambled eggs, crumbled bacon, and cheddar cheese. If you have any other good ideas for fillings please share it in a comment below!

Cheeseburger Mac and Cheese

Let's start off my new blog with tonights dinner! Cheeseburger Mac and Cheese....

I know. The name alone is enough to make one cringe. Cheeseburger Mac and Cheese? I'm sure you're thinking of that god awful boxed meal that you can buy for 1$ (Hint: it rhymes with shamburger shelper)..

But this is a whole other ballgame! Think of a deconstructed cheeseburger with caramelized onions tossed with some macaroni noodles and then accept it and start cooking.

The picture I posted has no mini patties because, well, my first try with the patties didn't work out so well..But I've readjusted and will post a better picture soon!

What You'll Need:

1 pound of elbow macaroni noodles (or whatever type of small shaped pasta really)
1 pound of ground sirloin
1 egg slightly beaten
1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs
1/4 cup of yellow mustard
1/4 cup of ketchup
1 tbsp of montreal steak seasoning (I've heard taco seasoning works well too, but..eck.)
2 tbsp of flour
2 cups of milk
2 cups of medium or sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1 yellow onion cut in half rings to caramelize
1 tbsp of sugar
4 tbsp of unsalted stick butter
salt and pepper to taste
4 medium sized tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
5 medium sized dill pickles chopped

Preheat your oven to 400 F.

Start a large pot of boiling salted water for your noodles.

Meanwhile, mix the ground sirloin, beaten egg, breadcrumbs, mustard and ketchup, and montreal seasoning together. Might as well use your hands to get it thoroughly mixed. Once that's happened, set about shaping them into mini hamburger patties by grabbing a teaspoon of the meat mixture, rolling it into a ball, and then flattening it onto a cookie sheet. Continue doing that until all of your meat is gone and your smiling to yourself thinking about how cute your mini hamburger patties look. Oh I'm the only one that does that? Hm. Moving on. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until the mini patties are cooked through, then transfer to a paper-towel lined plate to soak up the grease.

While you're waiting for the mini patties to bake, go ahead and start caramelizing the onions because it does take a minute. Using a large nonstick skillet, melt the butter and salt the bottom before adding the half sliced onion rings. Let it sit for a few minutes before stirring because you want to brown them. after 10 minutes, add the sugar and continue to cook it over medium heat until it has become brown and gooey, the goal is to caramelize, not burn so make sure you're stirring it frequently. If the onions get too dry, add more butter. Once the onions are caramelized, transfer them to a medium saucepan and turn the heat to medium and sprinkle the flour over them, cooking off the flour taste for 1 minute. Add the milk, salt and pepper, and let thicken, stirring every so  often for about 5 minutes. Take it off the heat and stir in the shredder cheese until it's all melted.

By this time your water should be good and boiling so dump the macaroni in and cook until its al dente. Drain and return to pot, dump in the cheese sauce and mini hamburgers and stir until everything is well mixed. Add the tomatoes and pickles in and stir it all together if you want or just sprinkle them on each plate you serve, whatever tickles your fancy!

Enjoy!

Serves 4-6




Can I please just put a small disclaimer here? Thank ya very much. I am uploading all of my pictures from my phone, so this isn't the best picture quality. I swear I'll start taking pictures with a real digital camera if people actually enjoy this blog..