The North American has long been in love with the combination of sweet and salty. It was something my last husband never understood, this compulsion to combine sweet with salty.
Jam and peanut butter sandwiches. Chocolate cover pretzels. Bananas dipped in chocolate . . . wait that is sweet/sweet. Never mind. LOL I am a fan of that too!
As many of you know I have family visiting this week. My brother David, whom I have not seen in 8 years, and his sweet wife Christine whom I have not seen in 18 years.
It is a cause for celebration for sure. Who knows when it will happen again. None of us are getting any younger and as you get older travel becomes complicated at best, and then there is Covid.
Things are a bit more open at the moment if you are fully vaccinated, but who knows when that situation will reverse itself.
I have wanted to make them a few treats while they are here. My sister and I are splitting the meals and today is my turn to cook supper. I am doing a curry. (A pot pie for my die hard dad who won't try new things.)
I wanted to make a special treat as well. I love chocolate dipped potato chips, well anything salty to dip in chocolate really.
But then I spied these delicious delights on a blog called My Kitchen Escapades. Ruffles with ridges? Count me in!
Melted Caramel? YUM! Topped with melted chocolate? Double YUM!! Dipped in peanuts. Well flip me over, I am done!! TRIPLE YUM!!!
Not only are they simple and easy to make, but they are gluten free, and there is no real cooking involved.
Not unless you count melting things in the microwave as cooking and I don't. So your kitchen also stays cool.
If only they were sugar, fat and calorie free as well, but oh well. You can't have everything!
The hardest part of making these is staying away from them until your guests have arrived. I have already snuffled up three without even blinking an eye. They are now under lock and key.
You want to use plain salted ruffled chips for these, unless you are really going for a strange flavor combination, but who am I to judge. I used the ones with double crisp ridges. Nothing wimpy here.
I did use Kraft Caramels for the toffee bit, but you could also use Werther's soft caramels if that is all you can find. What you do not want to be using is Dulce de leche or caramel ice cream topping.
You want a caramel that will melt enough to spread, but then solidify once cold. ie. stay on the chips.
Dulce de leche or caramel topping just would not do that. If you start with a solid and melt it with heat. It will go back to solid once cold. Its simple chemistry.
So you melt the caramel in the microwave and then spread it onto 1/2 of each potato chips. You will need about 25 chips. (Not counting the ones you eat while you are making these.)
Just spread it in a thin layer. It will become quite chewy once it solidifies, and you don't want to take out anyone's fillings. I dare say that wouldn't make you very popular.
The chocolate chips melt very easily in the microwave as well. My microwave only takes about 1 minute total on high.
I cook them for thirty seconds, give them a stir and then 30 more and they are pretty much ready. If you leave them to sit for a few they will melt even more.
Be very careful not to over cook them (or the caramel) in the microwave. There is no coming back from that. Its best to just to 30 second intervals and stir.
You might be surprised at how quickly these things melt.
Once your chocolate is melted you can either spread or dip your toffee covered potato chips with it. I chose to dip.
If you dip you get a bit more on each chip, and I am greedy like that. You don't want to be totally covering your toffee either.
Its nice if people can see some of the toffee so they know what a treat they are in for. I only dipped them, toffee side down to cover about half of the toffee.
I thought that was perfect. Well, it was perfect for me anyways.
Have your peanuts chopped and ready to go. I used some dry roasted salted peanuts. I just put them into a plastic measuring cup and snip away at them with my kitchen scissors.
That way you get a multitude of sizes from tiny chops to large to almost full sized halves. Variety is the spice of life after all.
You can either sprinkle the chopped nuts onto the melted chocolate, or dip the chocolate into the nuts.
I sprinkled some and dipped some. That's because I was getting lazy towards the end and had a bazillion other things to do.
I liked the different appearance of each. With some small peanut bits, some larger bits.
The dipped ones had peanuts all over the end, the sprinkled had peanuts just on top. All were incredibly edibly scrumptious looking.
I was really happy with how they turned out and even happier with the taste. This is one really delicious snack. I can see it would be very popular during the holidays when you have guests around and I am really hoping that this year we will be able to do at least a bit of entertaining, at least family-wise.
I am anxious to see all of my children and my grandchildren.
I would say about the only drawback about these is that I don't think they will keep more than one day. I think the chips may get soggy, but in all honesty? I don't think these will be around for more than one day! Enjoy!
Toffee, Chocolate and Peanut Dipped Potato Chips
Yield: Makes 5 servings
Cook time: 10 MinTotal time: 10 Min
Incredibly moreish. Rich, chocolaty, crunchy, chewy, salty sweet.
Ingredients
- 25 thick rippled plain salted potato chips
- 15 soft toffees, or caramels
- 1 tsp water
- 3.5 ounces (100g) semi sweet chocolate chips
- 1/4 tsp coconut oil or white vegetable shortening
- coarsely chopped peanuts to garnish (about 4 TBS)
Instructions
- Lay your potato chips out in a single layer on a wire rack. Leave space between them. (I try to pick potato chips that are fairly uniform in size.)
- Unwrap the caramel/toffees and place them into a bowl along with the tsp of water. Microwave on high for 30 seconds to 1 minute, depending on the strength of your microwave. Stir to combine and melt.
- Using a spoon spread a thin layer of the melted caramel over 1/2 half of the surface of each potato chip.
- Place the chocolate chips into another bowl along with the coconut oil. Microwave on high for about 1 minute, at 30 second intervals. Stirring after each until they are melted.
- Dip the top of the caramel side of each potato chip partially into the melted chocolate, leaving a bit of the caramel showing. Sprinkle with peanuts. Set on the wire rack to harden and firm everything up.
- These are best on the day.
Oh, boy, these certainly do look addictive and they contain the three basic food groups - sweet, salty and chocolate with peanuts thrown in just for good measute. I'm going to make these at Christmas for sure. Hope you met all your deadlines yesterday. Love and hugs, Elaine
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy for you that you are able to see your family again - it's been far too long.
ReplyDeleteI am afraid that I am not a fan of things like this. But then I've never understood peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I read about them in American novels and thought that North Americans were very strange (and that was even after I discovered that "jelly" was what we called jam - at first I thought you had peanut butter covered somehow with jello) :) I've never heard of chocolate covered pretzels, but immediately know it a definite no from me. But then I don't fancy chocolate much either.
I hope that your guests enjoy these treats and that there aren't too many leftovers to tempt you. Have a lovely day, my friend.
Those look way too addictive! Love the idea!
ReplyDeleteDo you think if you dipped the chip in the chocolate first it would prevent sogginess?
ReplyDeleteIt's quite possible! Hope this helps! Let me know how you get on!
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