First, congratulations to the winner of two vouchers for Veggie Patch Products! The winner, as selected by Random.org is Jordi, who said” my favorite veggie is cucumbers or celery. i like to eat them raw with some italian dressing (on the cucumbers)”. I’ll be in touch to get your mailing address and the vouchers will be sent your way!
To celebrate this week’s popped up recipes, popchips™ has generously donated two one-month supplies of popchips! Two readers will each win one box full of popchips to snack (see if they last the month!). If you haven’t heard of popchips, they are popped potato snacks. Think potato chip crunchy without the greasiness of a regular chip or the cardboard taste of baked potato chips. They are made for snacking – and one bag of original flavor will set you back just 120 calories and 4 grams of fat (more nutrition info here). If you are a potato chip lover, than popchips are a healthier option to satisfy your craving. They even have a Snacker’s Credo!
Quick disclosure: popchips sent over a sampler pack of chips to use in this week’s healthy snack recipes and two boxes of chips for the giveaway. I was not obligated to use or review the products and I was not compensated financially. All opinions belong to me. Now on the fun!
This week I have two popping recipes for you to try out. I am admittedly not a potato chip lover – I usually go for tortilla chips if I have a chip choice. I wanted to come up with a creative way to use popchips in a healthy snack good for weekdays or maybe a Superbowl party. We’ve already made dips a few times and that really isn’t incorporating the popchips. I thought about potato chip cookies (saw them on a few blogs), but every recipe involved a lot of butter or shortening. After thinking about it for a few days, I decided on making mini-quiches with popchip crusts. It is similar to last week’s snack, but this is more party ready! You can pick your own combination of flavors for the crust, but I chose to mix original, salt and pepper, and cheddar for flavor that popped. I didn’t use any cookbooks or recipes for this, so while it could use some tweaking I had blast putting it together!
This is a fairly quick dish to put together. It can be served hot or cold and you could make them the day before and keep them in the refrigerator until party time. Just reheat before serving. To have a crispier crust, make sure to coat the entire mini-muffin tin with the popchip mixture and only fill to the top of the crust (I got a little excited and overfilled mine). Only a few came out with crispy crusts due to the extra filling, but they tasted like little egg & hashbrown bites. I didn’t add any extra seasoning, because of the flavors in the popchips.
Poppin’ Mini-Quiches
Makes 24 mini-quiches
Crust
3 bags of popchips (I used 1 original, 1 salt & pepper, 1 cheddar)
3-4 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
Drizzle of extra virgin olive oil (about 1 teaspoon)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
Lightly spray a mini-muffin tin with cooking spray
Add popchips to a food processor and pulse until they are the texture of panko breadcrumbs
Pour into a mixing bowl and mix the crumbs with butter, add a little oil if it is not moist enough
Spoon a little of the crust mixture into each muffin cup (you might have extra mixture)
Using a tart shaper, or your hand, press the crust mixture down firmly into the bottom and sides of the cups
Bake for 5-7 minutes, until slightly golden brown
Remove from oven to fill
Filling
4-5 large eggs
1 tablespoon milk
About 15 spinach leaves (I forgot to measure!)
Combine ingredients in a food processor or blender
Mix until frothy
Pour on top of prebaked crusts in muffin tin
Place tin back into the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes until puffed up and golden brown
Remove from the oven and serve immediately, or cool on rack and refrigerate
Serve with a dash of hot sauce, if desired!
Popping Snack #2
For my second snack, I popped up one of my favorite treats, popcorn! During the last snow day I played popcorn roulette, mixing up three different flavors and then spinning the bowls around. One bite could be lavender, the next za’atar, and the last green chili. I have an Cusinart Crazy popper and can control the amount of oil I use when I pop – and be sure that my popcorn isn’t loaded with oil, butter, and other funny chemicals. I wanted to make a sweet popcorn for this week. The hubby loves kettle corn and caramel corn, but the store bought versions are loaded with fat and sugar. I popped up a batch of red popcorn kernels from the farmers market and made a quick glaze to add on top. After the popcorn glaze dried, I packaged it into sandwich bags in appropriate serving sizes. It’s great to throw in your bag for the car, an afternoon snack, or a something to tide you over until dinner.
Maple-Sesame Popcorn
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
1 tablespoon canola oil
Pop popcorn in a popcorn popper (say that three times fast!)
Makes about 6 cups of popped popcorn
Maple-Sesame Glaze
1/2 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
1/4 cup maple syrup (I used Grade A Dark Amber)
1/2 tablespoon water
1/2 tablespoon butter
Add all ingredients, except sesame seeds, into a small sauce pan
Bring to a boil over medium high heat and cook for about 10 minutes, until slightly thickened
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees
Drizzle half the glaze over the popped corn in a large bowl
Add sesame seeds and mix
Add remaining glaze and toss to coat
Pour onto a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 5-10 minutes until popcorn has dried
Try not to eat it all while putting into bags.
Now, on to the giveaway!
There will be two winners for the giveaway. Each winner will receive a box containing a one-month supply of popchips! I didn't count the bags, but you will be snacking for a while! There are a few ways to enter this week, please leave a separate comment on the blog for each action. You can do any or all of them for a chance to win!
- Like popchips on Facebook and leave a comment on their wall saying "@GoodCookDoris sent me! Thanks for the giveaway!". Come back and leave a comment below telling me you did so.
- Follow @popchips and/or @popchipsboston on Twitter and tweet, Just entered to win 1 month of @popchips from @goodcookdoris, you can too at http://bit.ly/f414b5. Leave another comment below.
- Leave a comment below letting me know your all-time favorite snack food, no healthy answers needed.
- Follow @GoodCookDoris on twitter or Like Good Cook Doris on Facebook (leave a note saying hi!), and come back and comment that you did.
Popchips provided me with the boxes to give to the winner. If you are local in the Boston area we can meet up, or if you are somewhere else in the country I can ship them. (U.S. addresses only, sorry!)
Entries accepted through Tuesday, February 8. Winner to be announced on Wednesday, February 9. For an extra entry, head over to Renee's blog at Eat.Live.Blog. and be sure to check out her snacks that pop!
Happy Snacking!