How to make an edible nacho party hat

Have you seen Despicable Me 2? I saw the movie a few weeks back and I loved it. When I saw the scene where Gru wears an edible nacho chip hat at some Mexican party, I was awestruck by how genius the idea was. I knew I had to try to make one too. I looked around the Internet for a recipe, and the only useful thing I could find was this instructable. I used it as the base for this DIY.

Last Saturday my boyfriend and I threw a pretty huge birthday party together (our birthdays are about 2 weeks apart) and I simply knew it was the perfect opportunity to make a nacho hat to feed and entertain our party guests.
 

Put 3 cups of flour in a bowl. Add a little bit of oil and some salt and spices. Just throw whatever in there you think would make it taste good. I used a lot of garlic powder, quite some salt & pepper and threw in some other random spices that my boyfriend had laying around. We made the hat two times. The first time as an experiment to test the concept, the second time at the night of our party. The first time we used way too little seasoning. The bread had very little taste so my advice would be: more is more. See this part as a bit of an experiment, adjusting it to your own taste and preferences. Add a cup of water to your flour and knead everything into a ball of dough. Then use a rolling pin to make a big flat dough circle.



You will need something to make the shape of a hat. We used an upside down glass bowl in a spring form pan as the base for the hat shape. Look around what you have in your home that fits well on your head and will survive the oven. Use aluminum foil to make a ring shape on top of the bowl and then cover the whole bowl with aluminum foil. The top of the hat will become the container of salsa dip, so make sure the aluminum bowl is deep enough.



When you are satisfied with your basic hat shape, grease the aluminum and spring from pan with oil so the dough won’t stick to it. Then take your dough and carefully place it in your mold. Make adjustments to the dough until it is nicely covering your shape and is starting to look like a hat. Then bake it in a preheated oven at 180°C or 350°F. Although the instructable I found recommends starting out with only 5 minutes of baking, I found that our hat needed about 25 minutes of baking time. I guess it depends on your oven, so simply put it in there and check every now and then if it is done or not.



If you are ambitious you can make your own salsa or guacamole dip too, but if you are more interested in the basic idea of the hat than the actual culinary experience I would recommend buying a ready made salsa dip (like I did).

Our nacho hat was a huge success at our party. Although it might take two times to get it right, once you know how to make one it is quite a simple way to add something special to boost the party atmosphere and impress your guests.

So, who will make an edible nacho hat for his/her next party?