Cubicle kitchen: Coffee Crunch Chocolate

Have you ever gone through the stages of weird food?  Like:

Stage One: Disgust.  You hear about some new thing, and you just think, 'Why would anyone ever want to eat that?  Gross.'
Stage Two: Curiosity.  You start to wonder just how bad it might taste.  And really, why would they make it if it really was so horrible?
Stage Three: Connecting.  You think about some other foods that you like that might have similar traits.
Stage Four: Craving.  You decide that you must try this thing.  Maybe it will be horrible, but by this point you start to believe that maybe, just maybe, it could be good.  And you wouldn't want to miss out on that, would you?
Stage Five: Tasting.  You actually get to taste it, and from there you might either fall in love with it, or perhaps you were right in the first place and it is the work of a flavor sadist.

I went through all five of these stages with the new Lays chips, specifically the Cappuccino flavor.  Coffee potato chips?  Huh?  But then, I made some intriguing connections.  After all, salty and sweet is an intriguing combination.  Kettle corn, for example, is delicious.  That thought, and stumbling upon the chips in an end cap at the grocery store, fulfilled the destiny of Stage Five.

The result?  I wouldn't say I'm obsessed, but they were good.  I found that while eating the chips themselves was intriguing, I preferred them with just a little bit of peanut butter.  I happened to have a jar of Vanilla Espresso Almond Butter, and it was the perfect 'dip', if you will.  It might also be yummy with one of those cream cheese fruit dips, maybe with some instant coffee flavor.  Something to round out the slight sweetness and bitterness of the chip.  And nut butter is great because it also has a complementary saltiness.

So there's a further Stage Six that I go through with these things, which is then to want to put them into a treat for klatch and share them with the world.  Combined with my almond butter, I thought that some kind of bark would be a simple way to keep the chips recognizable but turn them into something new.  Plus, I thought dark chocolate would play nicely with the other flavors.  And it did, this is just as good as all of those crazy chocolate bars I've seen all over the place, and everyone was very amused at my strange potato chip find.

This isn't a recipe that I expect a lot of people to recreate exactly.  But it's something you can certainly play around with.  Maybe just with plain potato chips and creamy peanut butter.  Or pretzels and cookie butter.  Whatever you find that intrigues you.  Push it all the way to Stage Six!

Coffee Crunch Chocolate

Ingredients

• 36 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup nut butter (I used a Vanilla Espresso-flavored almond butter)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons strongly brewed coffee
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• About half a bag of Lays Cappuccino potato chips

Directions

1. In a bowl, mix together nut butter, coffee, and powdered sugar.  Mixture will be crumbly, kind of like the inside of a Reese's cup.  Set aside.
2. In a large glass bowl, melt a third of the chocolate chips by microwaving on medium power for about a minute at a time, stirring until totally smooth.
3. Spread the melted chocolate onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
4. Sprinkle crumbles of half of the peanut butter mixture and crunch handfuls of chips onto the chocolate.
5. Repeat the melting of chocolate, spreading, and topping sprinkling. (Note: You could also choose to do a single layer of 'toppings' if desired.)
6. Melt the remaining chocolate and spread carefully.  Sprinkle additional potato chips as desired.
7. Chill in fridge completely.  Break or cut into pieces.