Convenience Store Ingredients

By Food & Wine
Updated June 15, 2016
We love good food here at F&W, but we're not above slipping great supermarket treats—like halvah, candy corn and potato chips—into our otherwise-homemade snacks.
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Candy-Corn-and-Chocolate-Chip Cookies

Credit: David Malosh
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Ingredient: Candy Corn

Christina Tosi, the sugar genius at NYC's Momofuku Milk Bar, reinvents her trick-or-treat haul with Halloween candy-packed treats like candy corn and chocolate chip cookies.

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Snickers Ice Cream Milk

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Ingredient: Snickers

Christina Tosi blends a trick-or-treat favorite into a luscious vanilla milk shake.

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Snack Mix

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Ingredient: Pretzels and Chocolate Candy Bars

Momofuku Milk Bar's Christina Tosi gives leftover pretzels and chocolate candy bars new life in this irresistible sweet and salty snack mix.

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Bars

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Ingredient: Ice Cream and Chocolate Toffee Candy

Break-and-bake cookies, which come packaged in eight-inch squares, are the secret to these incredible ice cream sandwich bars. Simply roll out all the dough to create one giant cookie, then bake, slice and layer it with store-bought ice cream and hot fudge sauce. The best part: dipping the bars into crushed chocolate toffee candy to form a supercrunchy shell.

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Candy Cookies

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Ingredient: Peanut Butter Cups or Mounds bars

These truffle-like cookies have an unexpected piece of candy in the centers. They're adapted from a traditional holiday cookie that Renato Poliafito discovered during his travels in Germany.

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Finding Nemo

Credit: © Frances Janisch
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Ingredient: Swedish Fish

Brendan Turner, manager at San Diego's Side Bar developed this drink around the time the hit movie Finding Nemo came out on DVD. "It was popular, as all blue drinks are," he says, "so we kept it on the menu."

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Rice Brittle Crunch

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Ingredients: Rice Crispies and Roasted Peanuts

Invite friends to make the toppings for an indulgent ice-cream potluck party—peanut brittle mixed with crispy rice cereal, fresh blueberry sauce and an over-the-top mix of crushed chocolate-covered pretzels, cookie crumbs and more.

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Chocolate-Mint Thumbprints

Credit: © QUENTIN BACON
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Ingredient: Andes Mint Candies

These thumbprints have a creamy, minty white-chocolate filling. Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito often mix chopped Andes mint candies into the batter, but any kind of mint-flavored chocolate works well.

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Halvah-Sesame Sundae

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Ingredient: Halvah

Bill Yosses shares, "My passion for halvah (the sesame-seed candy) is no secret. I love its crunchy, gritty, nutty flavor. I first started eating it in Paris at the pâtisseries orientales: the Middle Eastern sweet shops in the fifth arrondissement, near La Sorbonne. The flavor of halvah works well with caramel. Sesame is the new vanilla!"

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Spotted Porcupine Cookies

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Ingredient: M&M's and Pretzel Sticks

Catherine Ralston, an 11-year-old whose other culinary creations include Leaning Tower of Pizza Burgers and Ohana Pineapple Steak, likes animals, polka dots and cookies. Her porcupine cookies have pretzel-stick "quills," with M&M's doubling as polka dots. She says, "I thought pretzels would be good in cookies because salty can go well with sweet."

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Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding with Espresso Whipped Cream

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Ingredient: Glazed Donuts

"This recipe was created over a breakfast of —what else?—Krispy Kremes," says Armstrong. "I was planning the menu for RokBar in Hollywood and trying to come up with a fun, creative dessert." The espresso-infused whipped cream makes a brilliant, and equally decadent, topping.

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Deluxe Lobster and Potato Chip Rolls

Credit: PHOTO © JOHN KERNICK
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Ingredient: Potato Chips

"Putting potato chips inside sandwiches has always been a favorite trick of ours," says chef Jon Shook. He and co-chef Vinny Dotolo serve chips on Tabasco-spiked lobster salad tucked into buttery toasted buns.

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S'mores Pizzas

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Ingredient: Chocolate Bars and Marshmallows

Chris Ainsworth makes all kinds of seasonal dessert flatbreads at his restaurant, but his s'mores version is a year-round favorite. While baking the flatbreads in the oven is easier, they're also delicious grilled; just be sure to set the dough away from direct heat so the bottom doesn't burn before the toppings melt.

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Caramel Corn

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Ingredient: Popcorn

PS 7's chef-owner Peter Smith's sweet, hazelnut-flecked popcorn is a riff on the bowls of nuts and popcorn that line so many bars.

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Dr Pepper–Glazed Ham with Prunes

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Ingredient: Dr. Pepper

Most smoked hams are sold fully cooked, so "why bake them again?" meat master Bruce Aidells asks, before answering his own question: to improve the texture and add a homemade glaze—in this case, one made with Dr Pepper soda and prunes—for extra flavor. After the ham is cooked, Aidells reduces the pan juices and tosses in prunes to make a sauce. "Glazes flavor only the outside of the ham," he says. "But you can spoon pan sauces over every slice."

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Pretzel-Crusted Crab Cakes

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Ingredient: Pretzels

Instead of bread crumbs, chef Stephanie Sokolove uses crushed pretzels to bind and crust her chunky crab cakes. She sometimes bakes them in her outdoor oven.

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Brûléed Key Lime Tarts

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Ingredient: Oreos

When the famed Gray Kunz opened Grayz in Manhattan, he planned to pair every dish with a cocktail. What to have with this outrageous Oreo-crusted riff on Key lime pie? An Elderflower Martini.

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