2013 Super Bowl Desserts

It's that time of year again: the Super Bowl is upon us! With the commercials and a Beyonce halftime show, this year's event should make for an entertaining evening. In keeping with my personal tradition, I'll be baking some desserts to represent the teams. 

To be frank, when I heard that Baltimore made it to the Super Bowl, I was less than excited. While I'm not a huge football fan, I grew up in Cleveland and the infamous Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore for the 1996 football season. That left our fair city without a football team until 1999. To say that Cleveland is still bitter is an understatement. At least we got to keep our team name, colors, team records, etc. Needless to say, I'll be cheering for San Francisco this Sunday.

Top left: Fortune cookie recipe from Martha Stewart
Top right: Gold dipped fortune cookies from Cake Appreciation Society
Bottom: Dipped and sprinkled fortune cookies from Share Dessert Company

To get back to the desserts, when I heard that San Francisco would be playing, two desserts came to mind immediately: fortune cookies and chocolate. My family visited San Francisco several years ago and we stopped by a fortune cookie factory. According to the NY Times (and Wikipedia), fortune cookies were "introduced by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese, but ultimately ... consumed by Americans." You could go the Martha Stewart route and bake fortune cookies from scratch. Or you could go the easy route and decorate store-bought fortune cookies with edible glitter or team-colored sprinkles.

As for the chocolate, Ghirardelli is an obvious choice. Bake anything with Ghirardelli and you're golden. Maybe dip some fortune cookies in Ghirardelli chocolate!

Top left: Berger cookie recipe from Blue-Eyed Bakers
Top right and bottom: Berger cookie feature in The Washington Post

Another reason I was hesitant for Baltimore to make it to the Super Bowl is that I didn't know if they had a signature dessert. Seafood: yes. Dessert: I was hoping it wasn't a Maryland crab cupcake. Fortunately, Baltimore is home to the decadent Berger Cookie. It's a vanilla cookie dunked in chocolate ganache. DUNKED!

So my Noodles started thinking, what if this year I combined the cities into one dessert? Bake the uber-delicious Berger cookie and dunk it in a ganache made with Ghirardelli chocolate? Sounds like the perfect game plan to me!

Don't forget to wash down your Super Bowl treats with a little craft beer! San Francisco has all sorts of good beer to enjoy. Anchor Brewing and Lagunitas should be pretty accessible. While there are microbrews available in the Baltimore area, I'm going to suggest Flying Dog. They're in Maryland and an hour outside of Baltimore. Plus, their labels are pretty entertaining.

What are you bringing to this year's Super Bowl party?
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