Cupcakes & Combat Boots: Healthier Buffalo Wings & Broccoli Stuffed Potato Bites

I had a request from my friend Kim to post the recipes for the food that we made for the Super Bowl. I know I talked about needing a detox the day after, but in reality that was more from the volume of food I ate, not the unhealthiness of the food.

The food we made were actually healthier versions of two favorite "football foods":

Buffalo Wings....

and Potato Skins....

Alex was in charge of the Buffalo Wings.

He used Alton Brown's recipe for Buffalo Wings, which involves first steaming the wings and then baking them at a high temperature in the oven.

It's a bit labor intensive, but it really does result in wings that are healthier and just as delicious as their fatty fried counterparts! We actually both commented that we may even like these better than the typical fried version.

They were so good! He even made them healthier by decreasing the amount of butter called for in the recipe and increasing the hot sauce.

The only downside to the making of these wings is that the oven was smoking so much while they were baking that our fire alarms (every single one in the house) were going off for 10 minutes straight and we couldn't seem to get them to turn off, even with every window and door in the house open. It was stressful, to say the least. :)

I was in charge of the "Potato Skins", which were a recipe that I found in the most recent edition of Rachael Ray Magazine (no, I don't subscribe, but I do sometimes purchase it if I see a lot of good looking recipes).

She calls them "Hot Potatoes", but I think calling them "Broccoli Stuffed Potato Bites" is a more accurate description. They're basically a healthified and vegified version of Potato Skins, made in bite size form.

These were also a bit labor intensive, first requiring you to boil the potatoes, then cool them, then cut in half, then scoop out the insides, then assemble the "stuffing", then place the stuffing back inside the halved potatoes, and then bake them. Oh and you also had to boil the broccoli, cool it, and then chop it into tiny pieces for the filling.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure they were completely worth all the effort. They were tasty, but I think they lacked a lot of flavor. If I were to do them again I think perhaps incorporating barbecue sauce (or some sort of sauce) into the stuffing would have made them a bit more special. Or maybe they just needed a more flavorful dipping sauce (I just served them with greek yogurt as a topping).