Food Hacks

My daughter watches YouTube and has been watching a lot of food hacks lately. Of course, she wanted to try out a few and I told her we could do her top favorites.

In preparation for this post, I made a list before heading out to the grocery store (even though I had picked up my click list only two days earlier) and, once I got there, could not find the list to save my life. I later found that I had left it on the counter when I picked up my keys. Luckily, I remembered which hacks she had wanted to try and did NOT have to make a third trip to the grocery store. Thank heaven for small favors.

#1: Reese’s Skillet S’mores

This kitchen-friendly take on s’mores requires no open campfire flame and adds a new peanut butter twist. It also requires you to have a cast-iron skillet…or at least a pan you don’t mind ruining because it’s going to spend few minutes in your oven. Luckily, years ago a friend of mine saw how much I liked the tiny cast-iron skillet my dessert was served in and might have commandeered it for me. (I’m very sorry. If I could go back in time and buy the darn thing, I totally would.)

The hack didn’t say how hot to heat your oven, so we started low at 200 degrees, because we were just melting stuff, right? I sprayed my six-inch skillet with cooking spray (no need to burn good chocolate), and lined the bottom with six full-sized Reese’s peanut butter cups. Next, we sprinkled mini marshmallows on top and popped it in the oven. Where is the graham cracker, you might ask. Fear not – that comes at the end when you use the tiny rectangle squares of graham crackers as edible spoons to scoop and snarf your melted concoction. Well, after five minutes the marshmallows didn’t look melted, so we upped the temp to 350. Five more minutes. Still not ready. Five more minutes. Too much – as someone who does not like burnt marshmallows, the marshmallows were a little browner that I or Zoe would have liked. My mother, on the other hand, prefers her marshmallows blackened. What can I say? She’s weird. After our skillet cooled, Zoe and I each dipped our graham cracker spoons into our skillet s’mores. I don’t know why, but I was not prepared for the peanut butter. The inside of the Reese’s peanut butter cups were still quite dense and perhaps I just got a bigger mouthful than I anticipated. Funny, I like all the ingredients of our s’mores independently, but I prefer eating them separately. However, if you are a huge peanut butter lover, you may love this recipe.

#2: Pringle-cut Watermelon

This one seems less like a hack and more like stealing the best part of a watermelon. Essentially, you cut the two ends off of a watermelon. Empty and clean a Pringles chip cylinder; be sure to cut a small hole in the bottom of the cylinder first to let the air escape. Place your watermelon on it’s side (you know, one of the flat parts you made). Use your Pringle tube as a very large cookie cutter on your watermelon and you will have successfully removed the center of your fruit, which I think is the sweetest part of the melon. I had bought a mini watermelon for this hack and Zoe was able to successfully cookie-cut (Pringles style) the watermelon, which now looked like a hollow ball. We had to use a fork to coax the watermelon out of the tube, but once it came out, it was perfectly cylindrical and I could slice it in little hamburger-sized patties. However, there was still the remainder of the watermelon attached to the rind, so I had to cut watermelon slices anyway. Yeah, it looked cute, but I think the only winner here is the person who steals the cylinder of watermelon and therefore reaps the benefit of the sweetest part.

#3: Chocolate-Covered Popcorn

Personally, I love eating popcorn and some type of chocolate at the same time to get that sweet and salty taste of heaven.  Apparently, the hack is to pour M&Ms in a skillet with un-popped popcorn kernels and cover it with a lid. When you remove the lid – voila! – chocolate covered popcorn. In the video that we watched, the popcorn ended up burned. I suspect because it wasn’t stirred or the flame was too high, so I had every intention of NOT making my house smell like burnt popcorn AND saving perfectly good chocolate from being wasted on said popcorn.

I started with a pan (that had a lid) and heated it up with a small amount of vegetable oil. Then we added mini chocolate chips and un-popped popcorn kernels. Now, the original recipe called for M&Ms, which were supposed to turn your popcorn different colors, so we improvised and put a few drops of different food coloring in different quadrats of the pan and put the lid on. Now, I was fairly certain that the reason the popcorn in the video burned was because it wasn’t being stirred or moved at all. So, I continuously shook the pan to agitate the kernels, which all popped in only a few minutes. However, I did smell that dreaded burn smell and quickly turned on the exhaust over my oven.

When we lifted the lid, our beloved popcorn was popped but sprinkled with black debris that tasted nothing like chocolate and there was no food color in sight. I know we did several things differently, but I don’t totally understand (ALL the reasons) why our recipe failed. I wonder if the wax candy-coating from the M&Ms is supposed to act as the non-stick spray as well as cause the rainbow effect. We also used mini chocolate chip morsels instead of full-sized ones. And finally, I’m not sure how the popcorn still tasted just a little bit burnt (because I DID move my kernels around constantly). If you ask me, it would have been easier to make your popcorn the regular way (microwave or actual popcorn maker) and drizzle melted chocolate on top of it…which is eventually what we did, and was a huge improvement on the burnt popcorn, although it was a bit messy because of the melted chocolate. So we decided to put it in the refrigerator to chill the chocolate so it wasn’t as gooey; unfortunately, that meant our popcorn was cold, so…I suppose you have to pick your poison. I still think I prefer movie theater popcorn mixed with M&Ms.

#4: Nutella Crustable

This last recipe was by far my favorite. Spread Nutella on two pieces of bread, add a few small banana slices to the center of it, and slap the two pieces of bread together. Now, that just sounds like a Nutella-banana sandwich. However, if you use a cup to cookie-cut the middle of the bread, you end up with a circular chocolate sandwich with no crust, which probably appeals to 99% of the children out there … plus it’s super cute. Pop that in the toaster for two minutes (or on a light setting) and you get a warm, slightly gooey (depending on how much Nutella you use) dessert. Finally, a “hack” that wasn’t just more trouble than it was worth.

What are your favorite food hacks? If you have any good ones (especially ones that will lead me further away from a diabetic coma), let me know!