Two easy appetizers & an easy dessert

In honor of winter/ comfort food/ big sports games/ there's never a bad time for a good recipe or three, I am sharing three recipes: two appetizers and one dessert. They are all three delicious and easy. Regarding the latter, I am not one to spend hours in a kitchen for a meal or dish. Cooking/ baking aren't passions of mine to the extent that I'm willing to spend a lot of time on them. Of course I want to eat and serve good tasting food so I am always on the look out for easy and delicious items to make.

Buffalo chicken dip is one of those ubiquitous Midwestern appetizers: at many a potluck or party, someone invariably brings Buffalo chicken dip and a big ol' bag of Tostitos or two. (Who knows, maybe this is ubiquitous everywhere. For some reason I associate it with the Midwest but maybe that's because it's where I live!). At its most basic, a recipe for BCD calls for cooked chicken, hot sauce (a la Frank's), cream cheese, ranch dressing and then shredded cheese or blue cheese. I tried several different recipes that I found online for BCD.  I finally settled on one that we like the best. It's from Franks's hot sauce website.

Here are some additional thoughts/ notes:

1. About the chicken: many recipes say to use canned chicken. I think it's kinda gross to use chicken (or any meat) from a can. Here is what I do: I poach a chicken breast and then shred it after it's cooked. Poaching chicken is a super easy way to cook chicken though it results in bland tasting chicken. But this chicken will not end up tasting bland because it will be mixed with very non bland tasting ingredients... I have also used leftover turkey breast as the meat in BCD. No one noticed that the meat wasn't chicken. Again, the other flavors are so powerful that the meat is of tangential importance. You could also omit the meat altogether for a vegetarian option. I've never done it but you definitely could. The meat is NOT the star in this recipe!

2. I don't use blue cheese crumbles because I can't with blue cheese after I found out that the blue in blue cheese is mold 😲.  I have used various kinds of cheeses in its stead. The one I typically use is colby jack.

3. I almost always one in a half or double the recipe when I make this for a gathering. Almost everyone will like it. They will be dipping it with tortilla chips, another crowd favorite.   If the BCD doesn't all get eaten at whatever gathering it was made for, the BCD lovers in the family will gladly eat the leftovers the following day. My BCD lovers always ask with a hopeful note in their voices if there is leftover BCD in the fridge the day after I make this. 

I see BCD here:

I see BCD there:

I see BCD everywhere: 

Recently, I made BCD for Jacob's birthday meal a week before his birthday. Then he asked me if I would make it for him on his actual birthday so I did that. Then he asked if I would make it on Christmas day (five days after his birthday) which I didn't do because I was making it again on the 28th when my family was coming into town. I made it again on New Years Eve to take to our friend's house. When Jacob had to come home recently to go to a doctor's appointment, he asked me, "You're making BCD for me, right?" And I said, "Why wouldn't I? It's been two weeks since I last made. It seems like it's time to be making it again!"

The next dip is one that is definitely not ubiquitous. I have only had it at a gathering that wasn't at my house once. The dip is a hot Swiss cheese dip and there's a (kind of) funny back story. I had it at a party at my friend's house way back in 2007. Almost all of us at the get together loved the dip and asked our friend for the recipe. She sent the recipe for it to several of us. I printed off the email and made it several times to the delight of family and friends who were at my house when I made it (the reason I know that my friend sent it to me in 2007 is because the date that the email was sent was on the email and it was 2007). One day I went to look for the paper that had the recipe on it and I couldn't find it anywhere. I knew I hadn't thrown it away but it was not in the drawer where I thought I'd put it. I texted my friend to ask for the recipe again. She replied that she would send it to me but she never did. I didn't want to bug her again and figured I could find the recipe online since I knew the ingredients, that it was a warm dip, etc. Unfortunately, I could find nothing online that replicated what I remembered so I just made it based on my memory. It tasted really good so that's what I kept on making. A couple of years ago, I found the printed email with the recipe (I knew I hadn't thrown it away!). It had fallen out of the drawer and to the bottom of cabinet, being obscured from view unless the drawer was removed. Anyway, I chuckled a little when I realized that my ersatz version of the dip was off by a bit. I had been putting in way more mayo than my friend's recipe called for. Well, my version tasted good and was likely very much richer than the original one. I'm including my friend's recipe and my incorrectly reconstructed one ;).

My friend's recipe:

I just use three ingredients for my version- cream cheese, Swiss cheese, mayo and a dash of garlic powder. I use a block of cream, shred an eight ounce block of Swiss cheese and mix it with 3/4's cup of mayo. I made the dip once with slivered almonds but the kids about had pink cats. Since I hadn't made it with almonds the first time that I made it, the kids were not having the addition of them ;). So I never add them now. I do as the recipe says and bake at 350 for 25 minutes. I just add all the ingredients to the bowl in which I will be baking and serving the dip- I don't use a mixer to mix the ingredients together. I do stir the dip when it comes out of the oven to make sure the ingredients are distributed.  I always serve with Wheat Thins. Everyone loves this dip!! I have zero pictures of this dip and I think I know the reason why: I take this dip out of the oven right before guests are coming over so that it will be piping hot. At that point in the process, I am too busy to take pictures!

Next is a sweet snack that is sure to please a crowd or a family gathering. It's a monster cookie recipe. I printed off the recipe back in 2009 but only made monster cookies a few times over the years. In 2022, I made them two times, both times to rave reviews. While they are not healthy in any way, shape or form, they do have a couple of ingredients with some redeeming qualities. They contain four and a half cups of oats. I use whole grain oat meal (though is there any other kind?) so at least the majority of the dry ingredients consist of whole grains (the recipe calls for no flour). It also calls for a cup and a half of peanut butter which at least provides some protein. Again, not selling these as healthy rather as a really good cookie with not all terrible ingredients. 

I made these with chocolate chips and Cadburry mini eggs around Easter...

And then with M&M's at Christmas time