It is Day 6 of Chanukah 2022, and I have made precisely ZERO latkes so far during this holiday week. Eaten, yes; cooked, nope. I am planning to this weekend, but since my winter break from school started very late this year (today!), I haven’t gotten to the mess of grating and frying just yet. So it’ll be latkes for Christmas, and I ain’t mad at it– I love when the holidays overlap. But you know what I did make? These amazing little Latke Cookies! If you’re like, “I’m sorry, what-now?”, you are not alone– I initially had the same reaction of skepticism and side-eye when I found the recipe last year. So much so that I bought a couple bags of potato chips at the time… and never made them. But this recipe remained on my mind and I decided to give it a try this year. I’m so glad I did. In fact, I wish I was the genius who came up with it; so simple, quick, and unique. Also very much scrumptiousness. These little stacks of sweet and salty goodness capture the essence of fried potato latkes, but with just the right amount of sweetness and even a custardy center that mirrors the fluffiest latke. Except, ya know, in cookie form. So I encourage you to bust out that bag of Ruffles in your pantry and mix these up real quick for a fun and easy Chanukah treat to celebrate the end of the holiday this weekend!
The recipe is built around using one standard bag of Ruffles potato chips, but you’ll only use part of a can of sweetened condensed milk. I know myself well enough to know that when I wrap up the rest of a can in the fridge with every intention of using it for something else, it inevitably sits there for weeks and I end up throwing it out. To avoid fridge-shaming myself yet again, I made a modification to the ingredient quantities so I could scale up the recipe (by 1.69x, to be exact) and use the entire can of sweetened condensed milk. This means you’ll need a second bag of chips (or is there a jumbo bag of Ruffles?), and you’ll pour off a little bit of egg (use it for eggwashing another recipe!), but you get more cookies, and isn’t that why we’re all here?
The quantities below reflect my adjustments, and I also added a sprinkle of flaky sea salt on top. If you want to use the original quantities, check out the recipe on Food52. I mean, if you’re a person who wants fewer cookies, that is.
Make sure to use thick potato chips here– the recipe was created with Ruffles. The ridges are part of the look of the cookies too. I used kettle chips to top off the scaled-up quantity, and that worked fine as well, but I’ll use 100% Ruffles in the future so all the pieces are ridge-y.
- 14 ounces (1¼ cups/397g) sweetened condensed milk
- 7 tablespoons (100g) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten (you’ll hold back 2 tablespoons)
- 400g Ruffles potato chips
- Flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, for sprinkling
Preheat an oven to 375°F and slide a rack into the center position. Line two rimless cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Add the condensed milk and melted butter to a large mixing bowl. Pour in the beaten egg, holding back about 2 tablespoons. (Toss out or reserve the rest of the egg for another use; you’ll need slightly less than 2 full eggs to keep the same ratio of the original recipe.) Whisk all the wet ingredients together vigorously until full blended and homogenous. Add the potato chips one handful at a time, crushing them into large pieces as you drop them in the bowl; do not crush them into small crumbs. Gently fold the chips into the condensed milk mixture with a wooden spoon or spatula so that all the chips are evenly coated. Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes at room temperature.
Give the mixture a good stir to redistribute the condensed milk on the bottom of the bowl. Using a spring-loaded ice cream scooper or 2 large spoons, scoop small potato mounds onto the first cookie sheet, spacing them a few inches apart. The potato chunks won’t hold together well yet, which is normal. If needed, use your fingers to nudge each pile into a latke-like shape, mostly flat but domed in the middle, 2½ to 3 inches across. As you scoop, drain off any pools of liquid back into the bowl, as you don’t want the cookies to be ultra wet; this will result in puddles of condensed milk around the bottom of the cookies. (Still delicious, but not as pretty or latke-looking.) Don’t worry about making them perfectly even because latkes are irregular and that’s part of the charm of these cookies!
Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes, until the edges and tops are deeply golden brown in several spots. Transfer the pan to a metal cooling rack, slipping the cookie sheet out from under the parchment after 5-10 minutes or so. Repeat with the rest of the chip mixture and the second baking pan.
The latke cookies are best eaten the day they’re made, but will keep for up to 2 days in an airtight container at room temperature.
© Dafna Adler & Stellina Sweets, 2022.
