Whatever with the football, bring on the food…

I spent the majority of Sunday morning and early afternoon in the kitchen making food to bring to a Super Bowl get together. I decided on two kinds of cookies and a macaroni and cheese recipe from Food & Wine magazine.

Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies
These cookies were more like raspberry “chapstick” cookies… I’ll explain. I had a package of Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Dough – the just add butter and egg kind. There was a recipe on the back for thumbprint cookies – as a back-up, I went online to look at AllRecipes.com to see if I could find other ideas. The recipes I found were pretty similar to the Betty Crocker one, but in reading the comments, I learned the chapstick trick.

I got my sugar cookie mix in the bowl – then I added my softened butter, egg and 3 tablespoons of flour. I mixed it up and then created dough balls.

I then grabbed my raspberry preserves out of the fridge.

Instead of making “thumbprints” – people complained that the preserves leaked over the edges onto the sides and bottoms of the cookies… several AllRecipes.com readers suggested using the lid of a chapstick to make the indentations. I did end up making bigger indentations on my second and third batches.

I grabbed my Avon lip balm from my Christmas stocking goodies and I was good to go. It was the perfect solution.

I filled my  holes with the preserves. The recipe said to use seedless jelly – whatever, it was FINE with the preserves.

I melted vanilla chips in the microwave and then cut the end off a plastic bag and piped on the stripes. It was the perfect amount of sweetness, they were delicious! Super chewy, just the way I like my sugar cookies.

Next up was Chocolate Chip Cookies. I decided not to mess with a good thing.

I used the Nestle Toll House recipe on the bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I like to take them out just as the bottoms turn the slightest bit of brown in color. They came out perfect!

Next up were my Mini Macs…

I had seen a recipe in the latest Food & Wine magazine and then I failed to pick up cheddar cheese at the store. I did however have a bag of the Kraft Homestyle Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese. Perfect – any excuse to not go to the store on Super Bowl Sunday. I boiled water for the pasta, once cooked, I drained the water and set the macaroni in a bowl while I made the sauce. 2 tablespoons butter and the packet of seasonings – it was flour with some seasonings to make a rue. Once that got mixed together, I added the cheese packet – it wasn’t powder, but man was that stuff fluorescent orange. I also added 2 pieces of sliced American cheese. I then followed the Food & Wine Magazine recipe. I added an egg yolk and 1/4 teaspoon of Spanish smoked paprika.

I prepped my mini muffin tins with butter and Parmesan cheese. Grease each cup and then sprinkle with cheese before adding the mac-n-cheese to the tins.

I then grated fresh parm and placed it on the tops of each mini mac.

Place tins in the oven at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. I must say, I had better luck with my darker non-stick muffin pans. I had trouble getting them out of the lighter pans. I used a tea sized spoon to just pop them right out.

How awesome are these? Pop in your mouth mac-n-cheese? Now that’s brilliant!

We got the car packed with our goodies and off we went. The food spread was incredible…

Poppers, tequila and lime wings, quiche, nachos, spinach dip, veggies…

This was a Mary Alice’s (From Ace of Cakes) hoagie dip recipe – all kids of deli meats, cheeses, peppers, etc. and served with sliced up hoagie rolls. Super fun!

Carrots and celery cancel out the cookie calories right?

We had a really great time at the get together. We enjoyed the food, game, commercials, and hanging out with good friends.

Meet Allie – (Todd and Michelle’s dog). Yep, that pretty much summed up how we all felt after tackling the food table.

How about you? Did you do anything fun over the weekend or for the Super Bowl?