Entries Tagged as 'dessert'

A Kettle Brand Potato Chip Kind of Picnic

41

20.5.13

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The Real Kettle Brand Chips™ have been around for longer than I’ve been living. Only by five years, but they still have me beat. They’ve been cooking their chips, batch by batch, for thirty years in Willamette Valley, Oregon. Today, we’re taking them with us on a special picnic. I’ve always been a fan of picnics and may or may not be a secret hoarder when it comes to picnic baskets. Most of them look cute on the outside, but it’s what’s inside that matters… the food! What picnic is complete without chips?

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Since I’m a huge fan of dessert, I decided to take this salty snack and turn it into dessert. Say hello to potato chip chocolate chip cookies and chocolate dipped potato chips. Anything’s possible when you have a thick and crunchy chip. The Kettle Brand Chips are real chips made with real ingredients by real people. I love that. Each bag is handmade with a little bit of love from potato lovers. They also only use the finest all-natural, non-GMO ingredients. There are no trans fats, no MSG, no artificial colors or flavors, and best of all, no list of ingredients that you can’t pronounce. Gluten-free readers can also rejoice because these potato chips are safe to eat. Speaking of non-GMO, did you know that the Kettle Brand is the first potato chip to be verified using non-GMO ingredients by the non-GMO Project? They’re really looking out for your health over there: “Kettle Brand® has used natural, non-GMO ingredients since our founding in 1978. We have been working with the Non-GMO Project since 2009 to verify our products and give our consumers extra reassurance of the steps we take to ensure ingredients with integrity. We started selling the market’s first Non-GMO Project Verified potato chip earlier this year, and will soon have many verified products with the Non-GMO label prominently featured on front of their packages in the marketplace. We are working diligently to achieve verification on all of our products. ”

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The flavors that I chose to pack on my trip were: Sea Salt and Vinegar, Jalapeño, and Backyard Barbeque. I used the Sea Salt to make my dessert since they have the perfect amount of salt to balance out the sweet.

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Kettle Brand’s Sea Salt and Vinegar chips are unconventionally strong and tangy, just the way it should be. I love the way the vinegar leaves your tongue puckering for more. The Jalapeño chips are probably my favorite. The extra kick is like a fiesta in your mouth. There’s a spicy kick in every single chip– even those little broken pieces at the bottom of the bag when you’ve gone through everything else. The Backyard Barbeque instantly calls for summer. It’s the perfect chip for picnics and taking to the beach. It’s smoky, spicy, tangy, and sweet. How do they do that?

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As for the plain ol’ Sea Salt, they’re only made with three ingredients. Yes, you read that right, three: potatoes, oil, and sea salt. Kettle Brand keeps their ingredient list to a minimum while still creating an undeniable flavor and crunch.

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As you reach for that bag at the grocery store, just know that there is only one kettle style chip. The Real Kettle Chips have been inspiring knock-offs for thirty years, but none have yet or will ever reach their substance.

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Chocolate dipped potato chips are probably the easiest thing to make. Just take some melting chocolate, dip your chips in it, sprinkle with whatever you’d like, and let the chocolate completely dry on some wax paper.

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I used regular milk chocolate with heath bar pieces, coconut, and sprinkles for the toppings.

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As for the cookies, the sea salt provided all the salt that the cookie needed. They also gave the cookie a surprise and pleasant crunch in every bite.

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See if people can guess what’s inside the cookie before you tell them. I bet they’ll be shocked!

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What do you include in your picnic basket? Answer in the comments for a chance to win a $100 Visa Gift Card!

Print
A Kettle Brand Potato Chip Kind of Picnic

Yield: just under 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 cup Kettle Brand Sea Salt Potato Chips (not yet crushed)
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cream together the butter and both sugars. Add in the egg and vanilla.
  3. Stir in the flour and baking soda until just combined.
  4. Measure the potato chips to 1 cup, and then crush them in the measuring cup (it'll be less than 1 cup when crushed). Stir in the crushed chips and chocolate chips.
  5. Form the dough into two tablespoon sized balls and drop on baking sheet, at least two inches apart.
  6. Bake for 12 minutes.
http://lovintheoven.com/2013/05/a-kettle-brandpotato-chip-kind-of-picnic.html

 

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41 comments categories: chocolate chip, dessert, snack

Plain Ol’ Chocolate Cookies

3

24.4.13

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I read an article a couple of days ago about how differently kids are growing up compared to twenty years ago. I may have been raised when the whole “tech” boom came about, but I knew a life before it existed. I played outside on the cul-de-sac every evening until it was dinner time with the neighborhood kids. We played capture the flag, hide and seek, street hockey, and handball against any flat piece of wall that we could find. We even had a “secret” mailbox under a fist-sized rock, where we would leave strategically folded handwritten notes for one another.

What do kids do now?

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Kids now have an abundance of electronics. They have handheld devices in every size imaginable. They have cell phones in first grade and email each other instead of using a pen and paper. No physical interaction is needed since they get all the entertainment they need by staring mindlessly at a vivid 60″ TV screen.

The things that do still exist, however, are MASH, paper fortune tellers, and Pokemon. Apparently, Pokemon keeps rebooting itself to every generation. I only know this because I work with kids.

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I remember receiving a thirty day free trial of AOL in the mail every couple of weeks and begging my parents to register it so that we could go on the internet. Back then, there was only dial-up. I’d sit in front of my dinosaur sized monitor and cross my fingers, hoping that my connection would go through the first time. If not, I’d try again and hear the “deee doooo deee.” Okay, that’s a terrible impression, but you get the point.

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It is SO important for kids to get out and experience nature. Seriously. Kids now are missing out on life. My DB even missed out on life– He’s never flown a kite or learned how to ride a bike! I’ve recently discovered that he lived quite a different childhood than I did.

…mostly because my dad grew up dirt poor in Vietnam and what he saw as “safe” for a child would give my DB’s mom a heart attack. But, I had the best childhood ever. My dad fit four kids on a moped and we went on donut runs (Yes, totally unsafe and probably a little illegal, but the donut shop was literally around the corner from my house, so don’t freak out too much. It’s not like we went on the freeway like that).

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We also got to stand up through the sun roof while my dad drove around and sit in the trunk of the minivan with the door open (again, it’s just through the neighborhood so calm down!). We played outside in the rain by folding paper boats, putting them in the gutter, and chasing them down the street to see how far they’d go in the rainwater. We hammered bottle caps into flat pieces and used them to play as POGs.

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Don’t get me wrong— I didn’t grow up like a poor child in Vietnam. I had a bike and plenty of toys, but I learned how to have fun with what I had. My dad built us a two story tree house in the our backyard that had a tunnel which connected to my parents’ bedroom balcony. Too good to be true? Here’s a picture of it in the works (from the mid 90′s):

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He even built a play room just for us with a climbing ladder, swinging monkey bar, and hammock. He did all of these things for us because there was no PlayStation, no Gameboy, and no Netflix. We had to entertain ourselves with what we had.

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So thanks, pops, for always keeping us so well entertained!

Now, readers. Promise me you’ll take your kids outside and play with them. Take them on adventures! Teach them how to make a really good paper airplane (that’s my specialty at work). Heck, bring them into the kitchen and make this cookie together. It’s a simple chocolate cookie. No frills, no millions of add-ins, just plain ol’ chocolate.

Print
Plain Ol’ Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 cup dark cocoa powder
  • 1 1/4 cup AP flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • pinch of salt

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in the egg and vanilla.
  3. Gradually add in the cocoa powder, flour, baking powder, and salt until just combined.
  4. Scoop into tablespoon sized balls and drop onto baking sheet. Bake for 13 minutes.
http://lovintheoven.com/2013/04/plain-ol-chocolate-cookies.html

3 comments categories: cocoa, cookies, dessert

S’mores Fudge

4

22.4.13

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I was recently featured on one of my favorite blogs, A Cup Of Jo, with these s’mores fudge! Thanks so much for the opportunity to guest post!

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I would eat s’mores everything if I could. It’s the easiest dessert with the most satisfying result. Essentially, all you need are graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate. This recipe is wonderful because instead of adding regular milk chocolate, you’re adding fudge. Brilliant! It’s not as messy as the s’mores by the fireplace and it’s portable. You can pack them in tupperware and take them with you anywhere your heart desires.

The fudge is also the right consistency. It’s smooth, creamy, and has crunchy bites of graham crackers mixed in. Another thing that I love about this recipe is that there’s no thermometer required. It’s practically a no-fail recipe. You don’t have to wait for the mixture to reach a certain temperature– just keep a timer handy.

This recipe comes every so slightly adapted from The Novice Chef and makes about 16 pieces of fudge.

Print
S’mores Fudge

Ingredients

  • 1 (7 ounce) jar marshmallow creme
  • 1 1/2 cups white sugar
  • 2/3 cup evaporated milk
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 cups milk chocolate chips
  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 8 graham crackers, chopped (save a piece to crush over the top)
  • 1 1/2 cup mini marshmallows

Directions

  1. Line an 8x8 inch pan with foil or parchment paper and set aside.
  2. In a large saucepan over medium heat, mix together the marshmallow cream, sugar, evaporated milk, butter and salt. Bring to a full boil, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
  3. Remove from heat and pour in semisweet chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Add in the vanilla.
  4. Gently fold in graham crackers and pour into prepared pan. Top with mini marshmallows and crushed graham cracker. Chill in refrigerator for 2 hours, or until firm.
http://lovintheoven.com/2013/04/smores-fudge.html

4 comments categories: bars/brownies, chocolate chip, dessert

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