Featured

by BS

Super Snacks: Poutine Potato Skins

At Endless Simmer we’re a little obsessed with all thing poutine. We eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We haven’t figured out how to turn it into a dessert just yet (any ideas??) but breaking news…we now have poutine as a handheld appetizer.

The idea for poutine potato skins came when I saw that Mile End — the champion of our tour de poutine — was offering these as a take-out Super Bowl snack. I made my version for Super Sunday as well, but I’m pretty sure they make sense for March Madness, too. Or St. Patrick’s Day. Or Easter Sunday. Or a random Monday morning.

These aren’t actually so different from regular potato skins; you’ve just got to pair the spuds with gravy and cheese curds, the other two elements of the holy trinity that make up poutine. The biggest hurdle, of course, is finding fresh cheese curds. In New York, I tracked them down at Saxelby Cheesemongers. For the gravy, I decided to go a little more American than the dark gravy usually found on Montreal poutine, and went with a white bacon gravy. Since I had to cook up bacon strips to produce that gravy, in the end I crumbled them up and added that to the top of the skins as well, because…yeah, I don’t have to explain myself there.

Poutine Potato Skins

by Jessica

Really Good But Even Better Low-Fat Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I love cookies. L.O.V.E. Since I like to eat them frequently (as in multiple times a day), I’m always attempting to make healthier versions of old favorites like chocolate chip or oatmeal. So I was stoked when I saw this Sun Maid recipe for Really Good Low-Fat Raisin Oatmeal Cookies in honor of Heart Health Month (which was February, but shouldn’t we always promote heart health?) I tried them — and they are really good. But since I can’t leave well enough alone, I made a few little tweaks to the recipe and now I think they’re even better.

So here you have it: Really Good but Even Better Low-Fat Raisin Oatmeal Cookies. And even with my tweaks they still come out to about 60 calories per cookie, so I don’t feel too guilty about the fact that I ate like 5 of them out of the oven and about 5 cookies worth of dough as I was making them.

in Desserts / Featured / Recipe 9 comments

by ES Guest

How to Make Cookies in a Waffle Iron

Editor’s Note: We here at ES are big fans of the movement to cook all foods inside a waffle iron, so we’re happy to have Matt from WaffleMakers.net join us this week to talk about an important new development: waffle cookies.

What is better than cookies? Really, think about it…The answer, of course, is giant cookies.

So why else would you want to make cookies in a waffle maker? First of all, it is incredibly quick (anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes). Secondly, while the taste of the cookies isn’t remarkably different, the texture is completely transformed. Instead of being crunchy the whole way through, waffle cookies have a crispy shell with a soft, doughy inner. Real melt-in-your-mouth stuff. Lastly, unlike regular cookies, waffle cookies have the pockets and gullies that a waffle would have, which is perfect for spooning in generous amounts of whipped cream or any other topping you might fancy.

Any more questions?

Waffle Iron Cookies

in Desserts / Featured / Recipe 9 comments

by bakersroyale

Booze Bites: Cupcake Pudding Shooters

I’m going to be blunt. You need this. So seriously, get to the store and buy yourself a bottle of Pinnacle Cake Vodka. Can life get better? Yes, I’m sure it can. But in terms of having a low-cal cupcake that can pull double duty as a cocktail — I don’t think so.

Plus, this is an easy-to-make, 20-minute dessert. Do yourself a favor and make a lot, because trust me, they go quickly. To shortcut the time even further, bypass making the chocolate shell and serve these in little shot glasses with wooden spoons and they will look just as fun and festive.

BTW — I’m kinda crazy for the whole line of Pinnacle vodkas, so don’t be surprised if you see a few more boozy bites using their stuff. No, I’m not a pitch person for them. I’m just fascinated by their flavor-infused vodkas — hello, butterscotch, cookie dough, cotton candy, marshmallow and whipped cream.

So after you make this Cupcake Pudding Shooter, come back and see what’s next.

Cupcake Pudding Shooters

in Desserts / Featured / Recipe 47 comments

by BS

100 Things to Do With Peanut Butter

You most likely learned long ago that peanut butter ain’t only good for PB&J sandwiches. George Washington Carver’s greatest invention can in fact spruce up everything from drinks to desserts. Actually, we’d be hard-pressed to come up with a dish that wouldn’t be better with a little Skippy. Peanut butter chili, peanut butter broccoli, peanut butter ice cream and peanut butter cocktails — it all works. Folks, there is peanut butter tuna salad to be found on this list. No lie.

Sincere apologies to those with allergies and all you non-Americans who just don’t get it. Otherwise, enjoy our list of 100 things to do with peanut butter:

Click on the photos for full recipes.

100 Ways to Cook With Guinness

From strawberries to sriracha, find the rest of our 100 Ways here.

in 100 Ways / Desserts / Featured / Lists / Sandwich 11 comments

by BS

Another Win for America

Evanston, Illinois fast food restaurant Wiener and Still Champion (awesome name!) is already locally famous for their hunky cheeseburgers, fresh-cut french fries, and bacon-wrapped hot dogs. But now they’ve added a new menu item that deserves national attention.

For an extra charge of just $1.50, any burger on Wiener’s menu now comes with a thick patty of deep-fried gravy. The golden-brown crust of the patty adds a big crunch to the burger, and then on first bite, the hot gravy comes oozing out all over everything, ensuring each bite remains juicy and gravy-licious.

Bravo, Wiener. Bravo.

in Featured / Red Meat / Restaurants / Trends 3 comments

by BS

Are You a Supertaster?

For serious foodies, there’s nothing more embarrassing than being exposed as having a poor palate. Recently, I had a quite horrifying experience at Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn. Everyone in the borough has raved about their “salted crack caramel,” a deep, savory ice cream rich with the intense notes of burnt sugar. But when I finally tried Ample Hill’s caramel, I absolutely, 100% hated it. At first I thought there was something wrong with my spoon; that’s how much I disliked the strong, bitter taste of it. Even as three friends next to me all practically had a collective oral orgasm while shoving the ice cream into their faces, I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth quickly enough. I went home and literally washed my mouth out. Not kidding.

What had happened? Is my palate too weak to support the taste of this cracked-out ice cream? Or…am I just a SUPERTASTER? Many of you have likely already heard about this concept. If not, here’s a brief intro from SupertasterTest.com:

Supertasters experience taste with far greater intensity than the average person. About 25 percent of Americans are supertasters, a group with an unusually high number of taste buds. If you love food more than most, you may have inherited supertaster genes.

Evidence suggests that supertasters are more sensitive to bitter tastes and fattiness in food, and often show lower acceptance of foods that are high in these taste qualities. Supertasters tend to dislike strong, bitter foods like raw broccoli, grapefruit juice, coffee and dark chocolate.

A-ha! So maybe it wasn’t a palate failure, but just an instance of my true taste bud elitism coming out. Clearly, the ES team needed to investigate this further. Armed with a packet of tests from Supertastertest.com, we got to work.

in Contests / Featured / Personal / Trends 4 comments

Poutine Potato Skins

Waffle Iron Cookies

Cupcake Pudding Shooters

See also: 100 Ways to Use a Strip of Bacon