These Sweet & Salty Snowball Cookies are such a unique, fantastic cookie! Flavored with ground potato chips and stuffed with caramel candies, they’re perfect for any sweet & salty lover.
So I’m in trouble.
Okay, not real trouble. Not trouble-trouble. But basically, it’s been raining like hell lately and I have no recipes left to schedule after this one. Eek!
Normally I’m a batch-baker, meaning I’ll bake like 4-6 things in one day, photograph them all the next day, and schedule them out throughout the next couple weeks as I see fit. But with my move, plus settling in, plus a pizza and quiche mishap (I’ll explain later), and now rain, I have had no chance to whip something up!
Side note: Pizza mishap happens when you’re tired as all hell and bake the pizza on the cardboard round that it sits on in the package, resulting in a gooey, severely underdone, doughy and inedible crust… which meant I only ate the cheese & tomato topping for dinner.
Side note #2: The quiche mishap happens when you’re tired as all hell and hangry as all hell and make a quiche from your vague memories of making quiche a bajillion years ago, resulting in you using DOUBLE the liquid in comparison with the eggs, leaving you with basically scrambled egg soup in a soggy pie crust for dinner.
Side note #3: I promise I actually know how to cook and am not an impostor in disguise. I just am really tired, k?
ANYWAY. So if it’s lights-out around here for the rest of the week, it’s because I’m scrambling to bake something and make it look halfway edible and appetizing in my dreary photos due to the terrible natural light happening ’round these parts. Please forgive me?
In the meantime, I’m glad I remembered about these babies which I made a few weeks prior to my move. They are phenomenal!
I want to make an amendment right here and now that Snowball Cookies should be a year-round thing and not exclusive to Christmastime. There’s nothing especially Christmas-y about them, minus the snowball-ish appearance. But it doesn’t snow in California, really, so like, snowballs never equated to Christmas for me, so… is it really a Christmas cookie? Sorry, rambling.
ANYWAY. So basically, my snowball recipe requires flour and ground pecans, which give it that wonderful nuttiness. But for this version, I remixed it up with flour, ground pecans AND GROUND POTATO CHIPS Y’ALL.
Dude.
Life-changing.
And I didn’t stop there, because minimalism isn’t my jam. I stuffed each snowball with a Rolo because potato chips and caramel work surprisingly well together.
The result is pure sweet & salty perfection, and I guarantee if you’re a fan of a sweet & salty flavor combination, you’ll flip for these bad boys!
- 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup ground pecans
- 1 cup finely crushed ruffled potato chips
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 22-25 Rolo candies, unwrapped
- 1 & ½ cups confectioners' sugar, for dusting
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with silicone liners or parchment paper. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy, about 1 minute. Beat in the vanilla until combined. Lastly, beat in the ground pecans, finely crushed potato chips and the flour and gently mix until it just about comes together. The dough may be slightly crumbly at first, but it will be moist enough to hold together if you knead it with your hands.
- Using a 2 oz cookie dough scoop, scoop out a ball of dough and gently press your thumb into the center to create an indentation. Place the Rolo candy in the indentation and gently roll the cookie dough around the candy to cover it completely. Place 1" apart on the baking sheets.
- Bake for approx. 10-12 minutes, rotating pans halfway through baking time to ensure even baking. Cool on the pans for about 10 minutes, then gently coat with the confectioners' sugar. Let stand until cool, then coat again with confectioners' sugar.
Sweet, salty, tender little nuggets of heaven in your mouth! I just love that the potato chips give it a nice salty bite in contrast to the sweet, buttery and gooey caramel center. So good!
Have a super sweet day!
xo, Hayley
Yum! Love sweet and salty! We always make snowball cookies at Christmas, and only at Christmas. I’ve decided that our original recipe is still only for Christmas, but variations are welcome all year long!
Kim, good amendment! I agree; the regular version seems more Christmas-y if anything, but I’ll welcome this sweet & salty version any time of year!
TOTES BRILL ! ! !