Red HOT Potato Chip Cookies

This is one of those recipes that sounds like it'd be pretty gross. Instead, it ends up being an unusual combination of flavors that turns out to be WONDERFUL! There are so few ingredients required and they are so easy to make but they get attention and are guaranteed to garner several recipe requests if you bring them to a party or holiday event.

These cookies are a marvelous combination of spicy, sweet, salty, crunchy and buttery.

You have a lot of options as to what ingredients you use. Pretty much any spicy potato chip would work- jalapeno, chipotle, etc. In my case, I used Pringles Frank's Red Hot potato chips. The same goes for the nuts- you can use just about any kind of nut but I went for what I consider to be a "neutral" nut and used raw pinenuts since I just wanted them to add texture but not a lot of flavor.

Red Hot Potato Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup crushed spicy potato chips 
1/2 cup chopped nuts 
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 
1/2 cup sugar 
1 cup (2 sticks) butter - softened 
1 tsp vanilla 
Powdered sugar and chili powder for dusting 

Directions:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets (you'll likely need two- or use the same one twice) with parchment paper. If you don't have parchment paper, just don't grease the cookie sheet.

Ready to bake

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric hand mixer. Once it's nice and fluffy (approximately 30 seconds on low speed) add in the nuts and potato chips and once those are incorporated, slowly add in the flour.

Make small 1-inch balls of dough and place on cookie sheet. Slightly flatten the cookies with the back of a fork and place in oven for 15-17 minutes or until just golden brown on the edges (I needed more like 18 minutes because my oven sucks.)

Sprinkle on some magic

Remove cookies from oven and allow to cool on baking sheet for a couple minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

While cookies are cooling, mix 1 Tbl chili powder in with 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Dust cookies with chili powder/powdered sugar mixture.

Yields approximately 40 cookies