I give you now the recipe for the World’s Easiest Turtles:
Find some square pretzels. This is usually the hardest part of the recipe. Still, I found 'em at Wal-Mart.
Arrange them on a foil-covered cookie sheet and put one Rolo candy on top of each one. Put them in the oven at 250 degrees for 4 minutes. Exactly 250, exactly 4, or they’ll over-melt.
When the timer dings, take the cookie sheet out of the oven. While the Rolos are still warm and soft, press half a pecan on top to mush it down. Repeat for each one.
You can’t use this if I’m going, because I always make this, it’s so easy and very good.
Seafood delight:
one 8 oz. package cream cheese
a 6 oz can of crab meat (tuna fish sized can)
1/2 cup cocktail sauce
1/4 cup horseradish (prepared horseradish from a jar; not creamed or horseradish sauce)
1 tsp lemon juice
On a plate, using a fork, squish the cream cheese (the recipe I use says whip it, but I just go at it with a fork). Drain the crab meat (open the can, then press on the lid to get the excess water out). Mix it with the cocktail sauce, horseradish lemon juice. Spread the mixture over the cream cheese, serve with crackers (Pepperidge Farm assortment works well) and a knife.
You can make it the night before, but don’t put the mix on the cream cheese then. Water will separate out overnight. Bring the mix and the cream cheese plate separately, stir the sauce mix briefly and then spread it.
What I bring to a potluck depends on a fine ratio of how much I like the people there/how much effort I want to expend.
The very easiest thing I do is buy a couple of tubes of refrigerated breadsticks, cut them half-sized, sprinkle with garlic powder, parsley, and parmesan, bake them off until golden. Cool, wrap in foil. Do this the night before. On the day of the potluck, scour your house for a basket or big bowl and a couple of cloth napkins (or a clean dishtowel). For presentation, line the basket with the napkins, arrange the breadsticks within. If you like the attendees A LOT, you could buy some jarred marinara sauce, warm it in a bowl, and put the bowl next to the breadsticks for dipping.
If you can throw the foil-pack of breadsticks into an oven for 15 minutes on the site of the potluck, they will be great, but if they’re cold, it doesn’t really matter. People will still devour them.
I started a “what should I bring to the potluck?” thread right before Thanksgiving, and went with this suggestion. I couldn’t believe how friggin’ popular they were!
Deviled eggs: everybody loves 'em, but you’re not allowed to make them for yourself, so the only time anybody gets to have any is at picnics and potlucks. Kind of like how Rice Krispie Treats used to be before they went and started selling them commercially, thereby killing bake sales and rendering countless PTAs destitute.
I used to call it ‘DoD Cheese Dip’ in the '80s because I worked with and was around DoD people, and this was a staple of potlucks.
Get a brick of Velveeta cheese. Cut it into one-inch cubes. Put the cheese in a crock pot an heat it until it melts. Pour in a jar of Pace Picante Sauce. (Medium-hot is a good choice for a crowd.) Mix it in and keep it hot during the potluck. Serve with tortilla chips.
Keep in mind that you can make any simple dish that you already are used to making, sound fancy by simple substitution of trashy sounding ingredients with their equivalent snobby sounding ingredient. And even using the original recipe, you can make it sound high-falutin by using clever buzzwords in the description - or make it look fancy by smart arrangement or use of garnish.
And now that you have said it, it would probably work. For a few bucks rather than a single sandwich or burger or whatever you get a plate with a number of small portions of potluck “classics”. I would definitely try it at least once.
I second this. You can use a can of jellied cranberry sauce instead of the grape jelly, too.
This is almost always present at my work and family potlucks, and is almost always the first to go.
Another favorite is kielbasa slices sprinkled liberally with brown sugar and baked in the oven until the sugar melts into goo. So simple but SO good. But it’s got to be served warm, so unless you can get it to the party hot, or heat it up in a microwave there, I’m not sure how well it would work.
Heh. I call these things “crack.” Chocolate caramel pretzel crack. They’re amazing, and simple as hell. (The most time consuming part is removing the foil from the Rolos.) And they’ll break the sound barrier, how fast they disappear.
You’re looking for windowpane pretzels, by the way.
