Smoked Salted Chocolate Potato Chip Cookies

I know. I am really getting lazy with these blog posts. And for once I really don’t have a good excuse about sucko airports and jet lag and working a bazillion hours. Really, I’ve just been living it up at home in Boston for the THIRD week in a row without any travel. Can I get a hell yeah?? (Hellllll yeah). Now granted, I haven’t really been showering, interacting with other humans or putting real pants on for the past two weeks, but I’m working to remedy that this week. Yolo. On the bright side, I’m in a really good mood so this post won’t be dripping with my usual passive aggressive sarcasm against corporate America and airlines. Yay. Also I recently started binge watching Mad Men on Netflix, which if you’ve seen it, you can understand why I’d rather spend my evenings watching back-to-back episodes of Don Draper instead of writing blog posts.

I’ve been getting a LOT done around the house the past two weeks too. I have lots and lots of before/after pictures and some not so humble brags of my house project accomplishments at the end of this post. But before I get too excited and get into that, let’s get to the good stuff: the cookies.

Sunday I was in my usual predicament. So many cookie possibilities, but no real inspiration for this week’s recipe. I was in the mood for an original recipe. Maybe I was just riding the high of a weekend with Mom and all of our handy work around the house (or maybe it was the fumes from the backsplash sealer …) either way. I wanted to make something new. SO I rummaged around in my magic baking drawer of goodies and found my Christmas presents from my sister-in-law: smoked sea salt and smoked chocolate chips. And I thought, bless her heart y’all I’m gonna make me some smoked bar bee kew cookies. ROLL TIDE! Or something like that. IMG_2358

My sister in law is from the South. The real South. Alabama. Where the skies are so blue. Sweet home Alabama. Lord, I’m coming home to you. Not really, but metaphorically speaking with these cookies. So it makes sense that she would be the one to get me these smokey treats. When you open the jar of chocolate chips and take a wiff it smells like you just lifted the lid of crockpot BBQ pulled pork, or took a big sniff of liquid smoke. VERY strong flavor. So I had to think of a good cookie base to balance out these big flavors. I played around with the idea of chopping up some candied bacon in these, but I decided to keep it kind of simple. We had picked up a bag of Cape Cod Sea Salt + Black Pepper potato chips the day before, so I still had a little bit left in the bag. (Because who lets these chips last in your house for more than 2 days MAX). So I decided to crush up the remaining 3/4 cup of chips and incorporate them into the cookie because it just seemed to make sense. I adapted the Potato Chip Toffee Chocolate Chip recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction’s cook book to use as a base for these cookies.

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) butter, melted
  • 3/4 cup light brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg, 1 egg yolk
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2/14 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup crushed potato chips
  • 1 cup smoked chocolate chips
  • 1 teaspoon smoked sea salt flakes (for topping)

Step 1: Beat together the melted butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until there are no lumps. Mix in the egg, yolk, and vanilla extract until creamy.

Step 2: Sift together the flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt and slowly add into the wet batter while mixing on a low speed until incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl down before incorporating in the rest of the ingredients.

Step 3: On a low speed, add in the crushed potato chips and smoked chocolate chips just until evenly distributed. Chill the dough for at least an hour (or up to 3 days) to firm up, since you used melted butter.IMG_2359

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Step 4: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Use a medium-sized cookie scoop to place even-size balls of dough on a sil-pat or parchment-lined baking sheet. Make sure there is enough room in between the cookies, about 8 cookies per sheet. Press the cookies down lightly with your fingertips and sprinkle a dash of the smoked sea salt on top. IMG_2362

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Step 5: Bake at 350 degrees for 9 to 11 minutes. They will be slightly undercooked, but remove them from the oven and let them cool on the tray for at least 5 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack. IMG_2364

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Well I’ll be darned. Oh my stars and heavens to Betsy, these cookies are sweeter than molasses! I bet Neil Young would write a song about these. DANNGGGGGG are they flavorful. IMG_2370

I think my northern palate might not be advanced enough to fairly attest to the flavor combination of these cookies, so I sent them down south for some real taste testing. So hopefully tomorrow my friend Scott and his wife Sarah will give me the North Carolinian rating of these smokey treats.  IMG_2368The cookie base is neutral enough that it really allows for the smokiness of the salt and chocolate to dominate. I think these could be a good summer BBQ treat in an ice cream sandwich. You can get the Smoked Chocolate Chips online from Hot Cakes. And the Smoked Sea Salt is available from Maldon online. Yeeeeehaw.

IMG_2371Ashamed of my lack of manicure Sunday afternoon, I had to crop my dingy unpolished nail out of the shot. IMG_2373

Okay, so let’s see where I left off with my last update. I posted a week ago Saturday, so I’ll pick up with last Sunday and take you through today. Going forward I’m really going to try to get it together and post on a more regular basis again. Keep bugging me until i do.

First, last Sunday I hit up the SOWA market again with my tennis friend Heather. It was Mother’s day, my mom wasn’t around and Heather’s kids weren’t around, so we had a relaxing Sunday morning at South Boston Yoga and then wandered the SOWA market. Since it was the second week of the open market, the Food Trucks were not nearly as crazy as the opening weekend. So we scored some delicious Bon Me rice noodle salads with iced green tea. Gluten free too!

IMG_9408Monday night my friend Ania (who survived BOTH high school and college with me) came over for dinner. One of the things I love most about being home is cooking and I love cooking for other people. So if you want me to make you dinner, just send me an email and I’ll make you something bangin’ on the grill. Most people eat Tacos on Tuesday so they can hashtag it #tacotuesday. We working ladies, we eat our tacos on Monday night because we’re grown ass women and we do what we want. So I picked up some fresh Tilapia and we grilled up mango, tilapia, corn and peppers + onions. I also whipped up some homemade orange creamsicle frozen yogurt the night before which was bomb. Delicious.
IMG_9431I was also happy to have my kitchen back after it was occupado by the painter and backsplash guy for four days. Totally worth it though. Here are the before and after photos of my family room/kitchen.

Family Room BEFORE (light beige) IMG_9366Family Room AFTER: Darker Beige! Yeahhhh. IMG_9419Kitchen BEFORE: No BacksplashIMG_9386Kitchen After: BACKSPLASH! What a difference this makes in finishing the kitchen nicely. Good tip from my friend Josh to remove the granite splashguard so that the tile extended from the counter to the cabinets. IMG_9417And then my favorite weekend of the spring. Mom came to town on Friday afternoon for the weekend to help with a bunch of house projects. She is one handy lady, so with two of us over 2 days we can get a lot done. Four trips to Home Depot, 2 to Target and over 30,000 steps on our fitbits, we got a lotttt done. First, mission impossible: reattach the dryer vent. So my painter did a great job using an extra can of paint I had leftover from my bedroom to paint the back hall where my stackable washer/dryer sit in an alcove. What he did not tell me was that when he attempted to pull out the unit to paint behind it he accidentally disconnected the big silver vent tube. Which meant I couldn’t use the dryer because it was spraying lint all over and the windows got wicked foggy within a second of turning it on. The issue is, the alcove is so deep and the gas line isn’t long enough to pull it out all the way to get behind it. My handyman couldn’t fit on the side of it. Neither could I. And Sears refused to come since they don’t deal with gas dryers in Massachusetts. The girl I bought the condo from a few years ago told me that she just found a really skinny electrician the time she needed to get it serviced. So when Mom came, we assessed the situation Friday night and headed right to Home Depot because we had a plan. Channeling my Grandpa, and asking ourselves “What would Larry Condon do?” (WWLCD?) we picked up two of those long nifty lifter grabby things that old people use to pick up things off shelves. Then leaned the tall ladder on the dryer, and while Mom held my ankles I used my newly purchased robot arms to reattach the dryer vent. I had to do my signature thumbs up in this picture in case I went head first over the dryer and this was the last photo of me you ever saw. IMG_9452Using my robot arms to save the day. Also, I think the painter missed a spot?IMG_9451I also managed to dust off the top of the dryer with my body, and no one died in the fixing of the vent, so win win all around. Saturday the weather held out, so after our morning routine of walking Castle Island with some Sidewalk coffee + tea, we got to Home Depot … and got to work. Should have taken before/after photos, but hindsight is 20/20 so all we have are photos of the finished product. My electrician also finally showed up Saturday to install an outlet and light in the backyard so we can have some nice lighting around the patio this summer.

New backyard light and outdoor switch. IMG_9464Fresh flowers planted in the back of the garden. IMG_9460And in pots on the back porch. IMG_9469The biggest project was mulching around the patio and planting (iggy) Azaleas. I made that joke once on the spot, and can’t stop lol’ing about it. View from the side:IMG_9463And from the top: IMG_9467 What a difference a few bags of mulch and some plants can make! Now we just need to throw a party this summer to really break in the backyard. So as a reward for our hard work during the day on Saturday, we went to the Assembly Row AMC to see Pitch Perfect 2 on Saturday night. IMG_9454The first Pitch Perfect is one of my favorite movies and probably the one I quote the most in regular life. #crushed it. Anna Kendrick is my spirit animal. We also had some good eats while Mom was in town. Friday night we had dinner at The Paramount in Southie, which is a great local spot. Saturday night we went to Papagayo after the movie for some gluten-free Mexican food. And on Sunday we went to PF Changs, and had this shockingly unbelievably delicious Mongolian Beef entree (gluten-free) that we shared. We did have a strange waiter who, when we ordered Diet Cokes, said “fun fact … I learned in Chemistry that Diet Coke will make you go blind.” So I made sure to chug a lot of it and then when he asked me what I wanted to order, I told him I couldn’t see the menu any longer due to my diet coke blindness. Weirdo.

And that was it. I brought Mom to the train station on Sunday night to send her on her merry way back to Skip in Connecticut. Monday I decided I really needed to put pants on and shower again so I went into the office downtown. That lasted a day. I never put real clothes on today. But tomorrow’s another day. That’s all for now. Can’t wait to hit up the Cape for Memorial Day this weekend! Wooo Summer has arrived! And next weekend I head to Portland, Oregon for my first ever food blogger conference at the Indulge Conference, where I am excited to meet some of my favorite foodie instagram crushes and explore Portland with my friend Allie. Hashtag instayum!