It’s that time of year again – Super Bowl Sunday is less
than a week away. Even though most of us (at least in Indiana) don’t get to
root for our favorite team, we can all appreciate the opportunity to gather
with friends and eat good food!
I created this roundup of SEVEN (because it’s the number of
points in a touchdown plus field goal) of my favorite recipes that would be
perfect for your party.
All of these recipes come together very quickly, so even
though I’m sharing them a week in advance, you can procrastinate and wait until
Sunday to make them if you choose.
Also, all of these recipes are very budget-friendly which is
important when you’re cooking for a crowd.
It was so hard for me to narrow down my favorites, so if you
want more options, you can check out plenty more recipes in my recipe index here!
There are so many great buffalo chicken options that it’s
practically a staple at all Super Bowl parties. That being said, I couldn’t
choose between my two favorite buffalo chicken recipes, so I decided to include
them in one category.
Set it and forget it! This creamy dip gets a nice kick from
the jalapeño!
Cheese Balls
Sweet cheese ball vs. savory cheese ball—how can I possibly
choose?! For the sake of letting you experience the best of both worlds, once
again, I decided to include both cheese balls in a single category.
This is a sponsored post by Challenge Butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!
I spent the past week in our nation’s capital with nine co-workers to cover the inauguration. It was such a big deal for our news station this year because our former Indiana governor Mike Pence is now the vice president.
It was an exhausting trip with no time to sleep or eat, but I know I will cherish the experience and memories of the trip forever.
That being said, I am very, very glad to be back to a normal routine.
Today is National Peanut Butter Day, and I’ve been thinking for a while about a unique treat to make on this special day. So I’m came up with this recipe for peanut butter lasagna. Now when I told people what I was making I got a lot of really confused looks.
As I’m sure you’ve realized by now, this isn’t a traditional savory lasagna—it’s a dessert lasagna. Essentially, it’s just a layered dessert like lasagna is a layered dish. Dessert lasagnas have become really popular in the past year, and I’ve seen a lot of recipes for chocolate lasagna. So I decided to create a lasagna based around my love for peanut butter.
What makes this dish so wonderful is that it’s no-bake, it’s easy to put together, and there are just a handful of ingredients.
The end result is almost like an icebox cake with layers of chocolate and peanut butter. So good!
Peanut Butter Dessert Lasagna
Yield: Makes about 9 servings
Ingredients
This is a sponsored post by Challenge Butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!
I always look forward to Super Bowl Sunday, and I’ve had some really great experiences throughout the years. And to be honest, all of my memories seem to revolve around food.
When I was younger, my family would always watch the game with our neighbors—one of which happened to be a chef! The food was obviously superb, and I became a big fan of stuffed mushroom caps at an early age.
When the Colts last won in 2007, I watched the game with my parents at a family friend’s house. I’m a big seafood fan, and that year Larry’s wife made the best cioppino and homemade sourdough bread. It was my first time having the dish, and I still think about how wonderful it was. That year was also extra special because we had a snow day on Monday.
Each year I try to come up with a signature Super Bowl dish, and because my memories are so closely tied with food, it has to be something really special. After making buffalo chicken dip the past two years I definitely wanted to do something really unique this year.
I decided I wanted to incorporate my cast iron skillet because it makes for a really nice presentation, and I definitely don’t use it enough. I started exploring the idea od homemade pretzels, and I ultimately came up with a recipe for soft pretzels in the skillet with a spicy, cheesy dipping sauce.
I had never made pretzels before, so I did some research on the easiest possible way to make them. It turns out the pretzel dough itself isn’t all that unique. It’s pretty much just your basic dough recipe. The method for baking the dough is what transforms it into a pretzel.
The way that you transform regular dough into a pretzel is by boiling it in water and baking soda before baking it. It’s the baking soda that gives the dough it’s brown color and distinctive flavor.
How does this work? Okay, we’re about to get really scientific.
The pH scale measures the acidity of a substance. It typically goes from 0 to 14 with 0 being the most acidic and 14 being the most basic. Generally, water on it’s own is neutral and sits at a 7 on the scale. But baking soda is very basic. So when you add baking soda to the water, it moves the pH level of the water to about a 10 or 11.
Letting the dough soak in a boiling water/baking soda bath alters the sugars and amino acids so that when it bakes the center puffs up and the outside turns brown.
If you skip this step, your pretzels will be pale and essentially just biscuits shaped like pretzels.
This proves once again that baking really is a science!
If that’s too much for you to handle, don’t even worry about it. Basically, all you need to know is that if you follow the directions below, you’ll have delicious, soft pretzels and a spicy cheese sauce.
Spicy Cheese Pretzel Skillet
Yield: Makes about 32 small soft pretzels
Ingredients
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (reserve 1/4 cup to sprinkle on top)
Egg wash (1 egg mixed with 2 Tablespoons water), for brushing pretzel dough
Sea salt, for sprinkling
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare cast iron skillet with oil.
Make spicy cheese dip by mixing together cheddar, cream cheese, hot sauce, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder; set aside.
Cut each pre-sliced biscuit into quarters and roll into a ball; set aside.
Bring water and baking soda to a boil in a small saucepan. Drop biscuit dough into boiling water and let cook for one minute. Remove biscuit dough from water with slotted spoon and transfer to cast iron skillet forming a ring along the inside edge.
Brush biscuits with egg wash and sprinkle with sea salt.
Transfer spicy cheese dip to center of skillet and sprinkle reserved cheddar on top.
Bake for about 30 to 35 minutes or until biscuits are golden brown and cheese dip is bubbly.
Sprinkle sliced green onion on top before serving if desired.
This is a sponsored post by Challenge Butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!
After a relaxing post-holiday vacation, I was finally starting to feel like I had my life back together. And then classes started back again... and I got the stomach flu (worst I've ever had in my life)... and then I found out I'm traveling to Washington DC for the inauguration!
So once again, it's a little crazy over here, but such is life!
Sometimes in the midst of chaos, it's satisfying and relaxing for me to bake. With baking, everything is very exact. I know that if I use the exact measurements and follow the directions, the recipe will turn out exactly how I want.
Baking is also great for stress-eating. And that's how these brownies came to be.
It was Saturday night and I really wanted some Girl Scout cookies. But for some reason they seem to be really hard to track down. No one at my work is selling them, no one has knocked on our door to sell them, and I have yet to see a troop selling them outside a grocery store or the mall. My neighbor down the street told me his granddaughter would be over to sell some, but I'm still waiting for that to happen.
How on earth is a girl supposed to get her cookie fix?!
So I took matters into my own hands and combined my favorite Girl Scout cookies, which are Samoas, with brownies.
The recipe is very similar to the Samoas Pie that I made last year; the ratio of ingredients is just a bit different. There's a little more coconut and a little less caramel so the brownies are easier to cut.
The end result was perfection. If you have a sweet tooth and love chocolate, caramel, and coconut, this is for you!
Samoas Brownies
Yield: Makes about 16 brownies
Ingredients
This is a sponsored post by Challenge Butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!
I think each New Year it’s a good idea to look at how we spend our time and where we place our priorities. I feel like we, as Americans, are always going going going.
For example, this is my average daily routine: wake up hours before the sun rises, check my email, work out, check my email, go to work for 9+ hours, go to class*, check my email (I get around 500 work emails a day), eat a quick dinner before starting on homework, fall asleep on the couch while working on something for my blog.
And I don’t have children, so I can’t even imagine how parents must feel!
The point I’m trying to make is we never seem to take enough time for ourselves. I think some of us even feel guilty when we do.
As we enter the New Year, I think it would do us all good to treat ourselves for at least 10 to 20 minutes every day. Use that time to read a chapter in a book, flip through a magazine, do a crossword puzzle, or even pray.
I think the way we treat ourselves has a direct impact on the way we treat others
Just start by thinking about when would be a good time to fit this in.
Personally, I think the best time for me is before going to work out in the morning. My emails are still going to be there when I return. I can wait to check them.
So I’m going to make it my goal to start the first 20 minutes of each day with a cup of coffee and my Bible.
The biscotti recipe I’m sharing today will hopefully provide some encouragement to treat yourself.
Originating from Italy, biscotti is a crunchy biscuit that can be sweet like a cookie and typically dunked in coffee or tea. For that reason, in my mind it’s a reminder to relax and enjoy the morning.
Biscotti comes in a wide variety of flavors, and there are especially a lot of seasonal flavors. Today I am sharing a recipe for fruitcake biscotti. Yes, you read that correctly. So why the fruitcake flavor?
Fruitcake actually combines a variety of spices like nutmeg and cinnamon and cloves that work really well for the winter months. Additionally, since fruitcake is generally considered to be a “Christmas” dessert, candied and dried fruit typically goes on sale big time after the holidays. In fact, the candied fruit that I bought for this recipe was 50% off!
I got the idea for this biscotti from some family friends who gifted us with it for Christmas. This was actually my first time making biscotti, so I wanted to share some tips that I discovered while making several batches.
1. Definitely separate the dough into two parts before baking. If you try to bake it in one big blog, it won’t bake right.
2. The biscotti dough will be very sticky, so before you work with it, lightly moisten your hands with a splash of water or a little bit of vegetable oil.
3. Form the dough into two long, skinny logs no more than 3 inches wide.You want the logs to be skinny because they will expand significantly. I can’t stress that enough!
4. After baking the first time, allow the dough to cool for approximately 20 minutes before cutting. If you cut it too soon, the dough will still be soft, and you won’t get clean-cut pieces. If you wait too long to cut it, the dough will harden too much and it will be difficult to cut.
5. Use a serrated knife to cut the biscotti into 1/2-inch slices. Don’t cut them any thicker than that.
I probably should have put these tips at the very beginning of the post since they are the most important part, but hopefully you’ve made it through this novel. As always, thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!
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