You’ve been invited to an impromptu New Year’s party/potluck. What do you take? Check out these three fast, easy and fun ideas.
Savory Popcorn
Consider spicing up your popcorn with some savory flavors! All you need are our true-tasting popcorn seasonings. Choose from Zesty Cheddar, Buttery Jalapeno, or White Cheddar (we have Caramel and Movie Theatre Butter too). Pop your corn, toss with the seasonings while hot, and serve. Be ready with our Stainless Steel Popcorn Popper to make more. You won’t believe how fast the popcorn will disappear! Freshly popped corn makes a great change from typical party snack of salty, greasy chips.
Chocolate Fudge
If you have 15 minutes, a decent mid-sized stockpot, marshmallow cream, chocolate chips, sugar, butter and evaporated milk, and a broiler pan bottom, such as the one from Lehman’s 2-Piece Porcelain Broiler Pans set you’re good to go. You can whip up a batch of fudge fast, and take it right in the pan to cut and serve at the party. It’s firm and ready to cut in about an hour or so. Make sure you’ve cooked it long enough with a candy thermometer. You want the fudge to be at soft-ball stage before you whip in the marshmallow cream and chocolate chips. Check out our recipe here.
Granny’s Thumbprint Cookies
(Sunset Cookies, published January 1991)
Of course Granny and Geezer had a subscription to Sunset Magazine. And Granny had a ton of the Sunset cookbooks. When I was finishing college, we started making these cookies for Christmas. Because you form them by hand, they go quickly. Only 9 ingredients too, which is also a plus for quick baking. They’re basically a butter cookie, so you’ll want a very even-heating baking sheet like our Recycled Steel Cookie Sheet.
Scoop out the dough, roll it into balls, roll in sugar, press with your thumb, fill depression with jelly, bake.
Pro tip for filling: Use a zipped-closed sandwich bag if you don’t have a piping bag handy. Fill the bag 2/3 full with jelly or jam. Then, snip off about 1/8″ or so of one of the bottom corners of the bag. Pipe filling into the depressions in the cookies. This recipe link is for the chocolate thumbprints variation, which is the same base recipe we used for our jam/jelly thumbprints; only filled with melted chocolate. I think it’s too fussy–using the jelly is so much faster. Don’t overfill the bag. That sucker will explode, trust me!
Now that you’re done making and baking, ring in a low-stress New Year!
