Super Bowl! Corn Dog Muffins and Buffalo Chicken Poppers

The super bowl is well... the super bowl of snack days. We had a nice group over to our place to watch the game and I decided to do a little tablescaping as well since it was a party. Some of the snacks are blog favorites (beer bread and beer cheese). Others are self explanatory (nachos).

the table! pictures are not going to be great this time, people wanted to eat!

The two I'm going to share were inspired by http://iowagirleats.com/. I made mini corn dogs and buffalo chicken poppers. The mini corn dog muffins I changed the cornbread recipe to one that I prefer. She uses one that calls for buttermilk. I simply do not do enough baking to have buttermilk, which for unknown reason doesn't come in small containers. Plus, I like my cornbread to be pretty sweet and my cornbread recipe is that!

For the buffalo chicken poppers I did try making her recipe exactly, but in the 2nd batch changed quite a bit to (in my opinion) improve them pretty dramatically.

I also made some delicious cupcakes. Someday I will post the recipes for them as well as my amazing buttercream recipe.

Mini Corn Dog Muffins

Ingredients
2/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/4 cup cornmeal
1 1/3 cups milk
8 good quality hot dogs

Directions

Pre heat your oven to 400 degrees.

Cream together sugar, butter, and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, cornmeal, and salt. Mix dry ingredients into egg mixture alternating with milk

Cut the hot dogs into about 3/4" pieces. Grease a mini muffin tin and fill with corn bread mixture about 3/4 full. (this was about a heaping tablespoon in each). Push a piece of hot dog into the middle. I found that this worked best if the hot dog was almost covered by batter.

Bake for 7-9 minutes until cornbread is done. These are WAY better warm, so if you make them ahead of time, microwave them in large batches for about 45 seconds. They will stay moist and delicious even when you microwave them. Nathan looooved these! It was hard to keep him from eating them all as they came out of the oven. This made about 5 dozen

Buffalo Chicken Poppers

Ingredients

Two boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 packet of dry ranch mix
8 oz of cream cheese (reduced fat is fine)
4 Tbsp buffalo sauce
2 packages of uncut refrigerated crescent roll (you can use the cut kind if you have to but uncut is better)
Blue Cheese Dressing (for dipping)

Directions

Cut up the chicken into tiny pieces. Mix with half of the ranch dressing mix. Cook in a non-stick pan. Add in half of the buffalo sauce. Simmer the sauce to cook down for a couple of minutes. Set aside to cool.

Mix the cream cheese with the other half of the ranch dressing and 2 Tbsp of buffalo sauce. You can add more buffalo sauce to taste if you want it to be spicier, but don't let the cream cheese get runny.

Cut each sheet of crescent rolls in to 16 triangles. If you bought pre-cut rolls, cut each roll into two triangles. I found that with the pre-cut kind, one triangle was really great and one was generally sort of stretched out and thin. If you cut it yourself you can guarantee that all of your triangles are event.

Put a tsp of cream cheese mixture and a tsp of chicken on top of one another. Pull up each corner of the triangle to meet at the top and pinch together the seams. Don't worry if cheese or sauce leaking a little or if they aren't perfectly sealed. When they cook, they'll look great.

Bake according to your crescent roll instructions on a pan lined with parchment paper. Serve with blue cheese sauce for dipping.

These were a HUGE hit at the party and I wish that I'd made another few batches. They are just as delicious at room temperature as warm, so they can be made far in advance and set out.

these are just adorable... so I'm including a picture anyway