Normally, I stick to a very specific type of potato salad, which is the southern German (Swabian or Bavarian) styles. That for me is the definition of potato salad and yes, we ate it a lot growing up. That said, every once in a while, I will branch out and when I saw a similar recipe to the one that I created here, I thought I would go for it. Who can go wrong with bacon?!? Quite yummy, but definitely remember to serve this one at room temperature as cold bacon fat (which is part of the dressing) isn’t very appetizing.
Every time I step into the baking aisle at the shops, I seem to find some new thing. A while back, it was Butterfinger Crumbles. Often it is some fort of baking chip … various mints, pumpkin spice, cinnamon and so on. Last week, I found these salted caramel chips from Hershey’s that I hadn’t seen before and was intrigued. The cookies I ended up making turned out quite nice. The cookie dough is much more like a brownie batter, so if you make these, be sure to space the cookies a minimum of 2 inches apart as they do tend to spread. I think you’ll like them!
I think that these might be one of my more favorite cookies that I have developed lately. And I say “more favorite” because I actually have a lot of favorites. These are really dark chocolate with a bit of cinnamon and chili powder kick, not too sweet and then lovely dulce de leche sandwiched between the two cookies. As a last minute thing, I sprinkled these with powdered sugar (not written in the recipe), which added another layer of lovely. I call them “Mexican” but only because of the chocolate with cinnamon and chili, not because I actually think that these come from Mexico. 🙂
Pasta salad for a lot of people means mayonnaise. For me, that doesn’t always work well. I like going on picnics and I don’t want to have to worry about keeping my pasta salad cold (not to mention that it tastes better when it isn’t too cold). So this one has a Vinaigrette instead, which matches well with the artichoke hearts too.