The Red Kitchen Recipes: Game Day Treats

The Red Kitchen Recipes is a new segment of Hill's Kitchen run by two (Southern) roommates—Jillian Thaw and Miriam Taylor—enjoying their first year up north. Their mission is simple: in an attempt to outwit the (oncoming) winter, they will be cooking away their fear of snow, armed with our generations-tested recipes of gumbo, pecan pie, jambalaya and, of course, grits. 

Entry Two: Game Day Treats

Football is back! Football is back! Forget light beer and delivery pizza. Time for football-shaped desserts, salty snacks and ooey-gooey dips.

For so many of us that means an entire Sunday completely devoted to shouting in frustration or happiness as our hometown team lifts our spirits or stomps on our happiness with a muddy cleat. Miriam Taylor and I come from a land of religious devotion to football—the SEC—and when college football’s best conference winds down for the day, the pros take the stage and we sit, jerseys over jeans, ready to watch…

..and ready to eat.

Football season is another factor into the diet derailment known as autumn and winter. As cans of pumpkin restock the shelves and Halloween candy line the aisles, buffalo wings, chips and dip, pizza slices and beer cans are Sunday staples. All things in moderation, right? Besides, game day food is in the fun of making it—just pass it off to the boys, kick back, and enjoy the Kaepernicking and JJ Swatting.

Three Cheese Bacon Dip  (from the Two-Bite Club)

What you need:

16-oz. container cottage cheese

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

½ cup shredded parmesan cheese

8-10 slices of cooked bacon, crumbled

2 green onions, sliced

What you do:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix until about 85%. Set aside some bacon and green onions to use as garnish. Put dip into a glass baking dish and bake for 20-25 minutes. Add the reserved ingredients as garnish and let cool before serving. We liked this best with corn chips!

Football-Shaped Whoopee Pies (from Spencer and Hilary)

What you need:

1 box of Devil’s Food Cake Mix

2/3 cup of shortening

2 eggs

Cream cheese frosting

What you do:

Okay, we may be cheating here by using the ready-made ingredients, but the fun in this simple recipe is rolling out the cookie shapes and decorating the final product with lace! Mix together the cake mix with the shortening and eggs. When it’s all complete, wet your hands—water, butter, what have you—and roll the dough like a little worm. Pinch the ends together. This is the best way to get them shaped like mini-footballs. Pop them in the oven; it’s likely the dough will be thin, so no more than 10 minutes should do the trick. Take them out, let them cool, and match up closely. Spread cream cheese frosting between the cookies.

To add the laces atop the whoopee pies, save some frosting and put it into a Ziploc bag. Snip a corner of the bag and draw the laces on the top cookie. Voila!

Football-Shaped Rice Krispie Treats (from Rice Krispies)

What you need:

3 TBSP butter

1 package of marshmallows

½ cup peanut butter

5-6 cups of Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies cereal

White frosting

What you do:

Another super-quick and fun game day treat that comes as mini-footballs! Make these like you would any rice krispies: in a saucepan, melt butter and marshmallows until they are completely melted and blended. Add the peanut butter until it too is melted into the mixture, and then add the rice krispies.

Let the mixture cool before shaping the rice krispies into footballs. It’s easier if your hands are a little wet with water or butter. Once you shape them, decorate with white frosting. Simple as pie!

Haystacks (affectionately known as Ting-a-lings in the South)

What you need:

1 cup butterscotch morsels

½ cup salted peanuts

½ cup of peanut butter

2 cups chow mein noodles

What you do:

In a small bowl melt butterscotch chips and peanut butter in a microwave. Blend together. Then stir peanuts and noodles gently into the melted peanut butter mixture. Drop the dough by the spoonful onto waxed paper. Let cool until set.

Trash (a.k.a. baked Chex Mix)

What you need:

1 box wheat chex cereal

1 box corn chex cereal

1 bag pretzel sticks

1 (large) can assorted nuts

Worcestershiresauce

Lawry’s Seasoned Salt

4 tbsp butter (melted)

What you do:

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. In a 9x13 casserole dish layer the wheat and corn chex, pretzel sticks, and assorted nuts. Mix well. Then layer the butter, and pour a generous amount of Worcestershire sauce (about 1/3 of the regular sized bottle) on top of the mix, and then shake Lawry’s Seasoned Salt on the dish while mixing it with a spoon. Bake for thirty minutes, remove from oven and mix the dish while adding a smaller portion of the Lawry’s salt and Worcestershire sauce, bake for another thirty minutes. Remove from oven and eat hot or cold. Store in a lidded Tupperware to keep it from going stale. (Be warned: this is super easy and super addictive)

So go enjoy and go Orange!