deVine Table

It’s the end of the quarter at Northwest Wine Academy. That means it’s time for me to prepare a food and wine pairing to present to the class as part of my grade. The topic is dessert wines.

I’m one of those people who craves the contrast between sweet and salty. So, when I saw a recipe for potato chip cookies, I whipped up a batch hoping to strike that balance. My partner on the project, Steve Roberts of the Wine Trails books and apps, tasted them and declared we had a winner.

After several taste tests and tweaks of the recipe, this is the final version that we will present in class.

This recipe is adapted from “Crazy About Cookies” by Krystina Castella.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups coarsely crushed salted Tim’s potato chips, divided
• 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt (I used Citron Falk Salt)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Beat together butter and sugar with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy. Add vanilla, lemon zest, flour, and 1 cup of the potato chips. Beat on medium speed until well mixed.
2. Put the remaining potato chips in a shallow bowl. Using a small ice cream scoop, form the dough into 1 inch balls, rolling each in the potato chips. Place on parchment lined cookie sheets 2 ½ inches apart. Sprinkle a tiny bit of the coarse salt on top of each cookie, and press a bit to flatten.
3. Bake until lightly browned, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Cookies can be stored in an airtight container up to 5 days.

Wine Pairing

Steve and I selected Treveri Cellars Sparkling Mueller Thurgau to pair with the cookies. I’ve been smitten with the winery and the unique bubbles being produced there in the Methode Champenois ever since I first tasted them at Debuts and Discoveries. Having recently visited the winery’s Wapato Tasting Room and being quite taken with their fantastic setup, they were fresh on my mind.

Here are Steve’s wonderfully descriptive notes on the pairing:

“The slightly-sweet bubbly compliments the crunchy, chewy, buttery, salty and
equally sweet Potato Chip Cookies. With a touch of sweetness, Treveri’s demi-sec
Müeller-Thurgau matches the sugar level of the cookie but the saltiness of the
potato chips really adds to the taste sensation — like peanut butter and jam,
opposites attract. The cookies themselves are light in weight mirroring the
lightness of the sparkling wine. With each sip of wine, the wine’s acidity in
combination with its effervescence cleanses the palate and gets you ready for the
next bite of cookie. The lemon notes in the wine complement the lemon zest in the
cookie.”

The pairing also goes to show that bubbles aren’t just for special occasions. Reasonably priced at just $16, you can bet we’ll be breaking out the Treveri and cookies just for fun.

Related posts:

1. Pairing Wine with Potato Chips
2. Savory Sweet Potato Empanadas
3. Curried Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup

Tags: Recipe, Treveri cellars

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2012 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Dessert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.