Mrs. Cogito Makes: Super Bowl Spread

It's Super Bowl season once again, folks! Some people love the Super Bowl for the chance to watch what should be the greatest game of the season, some love the lineup of hilarious commercials, but we all love the excuse to eat only snack foods for an entire night. Here you'll find the selection of delicious game day foods we'll be enjoying at the Hunter house! I'll be updating the article as I prepare more dishes for the big game.

Kickoff

First up is one of our favorite eat-this-mindlessly-for-hours snacks: ranch mix. Ranch mix is very simple to make and will please any crowd! For this batch of mix I used the following:

• Corn Squares (Or any plain cereal of your choosing): I use three cups of cereal and use the entire package of the other ingredients.

• Cheddar Turtles or Goldfish Crackers: Aldi's Cheddar Turtles are always my favorite part of the mix, just look how cute they are in the second photo!

• Cheez-its: I normally use plain Cheez-its but white cheddar was the only flavor available at my store (it's still delicious with the white cheddar).

• Oyster Crackers: Aldi has this larger size of oyster crackers that grab hold of the ranch flavor well. The oyster crackers are Jake's favorite part of the mix.

• Butter-flavored Popcorn Oil: use 3/4 cup of this golden oil, just try not to think about the fact that you're pouring so much buttery oil all over everything.

• Two Packs of Powdered Ranch Mix: I usually buy one dips mix and one seasoning mix. I'm not convinced they're different but I like to cover my bases.

• Bugles: You may notice Bugles aren't pictured above. I wasn't able to pick a bag up at my store but normally include them in my ranch mix.

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Believe it or not, that's essentially the hardest step. The assembly of the mix just includes grabbing your biggest bowl, pouring in all the snack foods, drizzling the popcorn oil and ranch mix over everything, and stirring! Make sure everything is well mixed so each piece can be as perfectly covered as the pictured Cheez-it! To help with this, I usually drizzle about half of the oil, mix, half of the ranch packets, mix, the rest of the oil, mix, the rest of the ranch, and mix one last time. This ensures every bite has lots of flavor! Spread the mix out over two large cookie sheets and bake for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Because I get so excited for the ranch mix to be finished and like to admire my handiwork as it cooks, I stir my mix every 10 minutes but once in the middle of the cooking time would likely be sufficient. Once the 40 minutes is up, remove the mix from the oven, and try to let it cool before you dig in. Good luck, because it smells so good!

First Down

Next up: pickle wrap dip! I promise it tastes better than it looks! With only three ingredients and some elbow grease, you'll have a delicious dip on the table in no time!

• Cream Cheese: make sure it has time to soften so you can mix it easily!

• Dried Beef: I've seen people use ham instead but the salty dried beef works so well with the cream cheese.

• Dill Pickles: any size, any brand will do!

Finely dice your dried beef and dill pickles. Mix thoroughly with the cream cheese. If you're like me, your arms will be very tired by the time everything is combined. That's okay, it feels like a workout which means you've earned some dip and crackers! The dip is best when let to sit at least a few hours, preferably overnight. Serve with your crackers of choice - we went with Ritz.

Touchdown

This. This is the Super Bowl snack I make that I think about year round. Sometimes on a random day in July I hear it calling to me: chocolate-covered Nutter Butter footballs. They're so delicious and so cute! They're a little more time-intensive than the other recipes because of the time it takes to dip and decorate them, but you could absolutely dip them without decorating and they'd still be enjoyed by your whole crew!

• Nutter Butters: Get the family sized pack. You're going to want it.

• Chocolate Almond Bark: the superior flavor of almond bark in my opinion. You could use one flavor or the other depending on your preference.

• White Chocolate Almond Bark: I dip half of the Nutter Butters in chocolate and half in white and use the opposite color as the decoration color. As mentioned above, I prefer the chocolate but the white chocolate is still tasty!

To dip the Nutter Butters you first need to melt the almond bark. Almond bark can be microwaved, but I prefer to use the double boiler method because it keeps the bark from solidifying and giving a less smooth finish to your footballs. To prepare a double boiler you will need a sauce pan with high sides and a bowl wide enough to sit in the sauce pan without falling in. Fill your sauce pan with water just below the level that your bowl will sit. It's best if your water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl. Bring the water to a boil and add your bark to the bowl. The heat from the steam below will melt the bark without risk of it burning. Once your bark is melted, dip a cookie and let the excess bark drip off. I like to use a fork to dip as it allows the excess to drip through the tines so you can use less bark overall. Let the dipped Nutter Butter dry before doing any decoration. To decorate, I fill a ziplock baggy with the leftover melted bark and cut off the corner of the bag. This acts as a piping bag, which you could use if you have on hand, but I think the baggies are just as easy and cheaper. Make sure to let your bark cool a little before doing any piping to avoid burning your hand! I decorated my cookies as footballs and with the names of the two teams competing but feel free to let your imagination run wild! Be aware: the footballs are relatively easy to decorate but it is much harder to write words with the almond bark. This is could be operator error on my behalf, (as you can clearly see, I did not anticipate how much room the word "Bengals" would take up and ran out of room) and you may have better luck than me. I also found that the chocolate almond bark set up more quickly than the white and was harder to write with. Once you've decorated to your liking, try and save enough of these to make it to your Super Bowl party. It takes me a lot of will power not to eat them all as soon as they've set!

I hope you enjoy these recipes! Let me know in the comments what you like to make for your Super Bowl parties! Looking for articles talking about the big game or sports in general? Head to our Sports tab for lots of interesting reads from the other members of Cogito Ergo Cogito! You can also check out more of my recipes (like this chili recipe that would also be great for game day!) at the Our Life tab. Thanks for reading!