Bacon and Chocolate...

When Jeff brought the empty tray from last week's Wednesday Treat Day, it came with a request... one I didn't expect to receive. Some of his co-workers asked for a treat with chocolate and one ingredient that seems quite trendy as of late... bacon! I wonder if it has something to do with the state fair coming up and the crazy chocolate covered slab of bacon they were pushing last year?

At any rate, I'm here to please, so after doing some looking around to see what we could come up with, I ended up making these Crispy Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies. This idea came to mind after seeing David's post on Candied Bacon Ice Cream. I thought if it's good enough to put in ice cream, I had to imagine it would (hopefully) be good in one of our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes! It seems I'm not the only one though... as there have been others who thought bacon and cookies should go together!

Candied bacon is a snap to make, especially since it is done in the oven and isn't as messy as making it on the stove top. Starting out with strips of thickly sliced bacon, they were neatly arranged on a baking sheet, with each piece then being lightly covered with sweet brown sugar. To make sure the bacon gets uniformly coated, halfway through baking them, you'll want to flip the bacon over and drag each piece through the sticky juices on the baking sheet so each side gets a piece of the action. If your bacon is excessively fatty, you may want to bake it on a rack so the strips don't stew in the juices. Leave the bacon in until it is quite dark - not burned, but you want the pieces richly burnished and crisp. While the slices cooled, I moved onto the cookie dough!

The dough is one we've done before and is a favorite of Jeff's as he likes crisp cookies that still have a slight chew to them. It does use a combo of butter and shortening (I like using Spectrum Organic) - this gives us the texture we like best, but you still get that buttery flavor one expects with chocolate chip cookies. Once prepared, I hacked up the cooled bacon into uneven bits, some small, some large, and tossed them in when I folded in a couple generous handfuls of bittersweet chocolate. I like to refrigerate the dough first, which firms the fat back up and helps keep the cookies in tidy circles that spread just enough, yet not too much that they become too thin. A couple hours is sufficient, but the longer you can let it go the better - I prepared the dough early Monday morning, then baked this evening.

When I went to test the cookie, I thought I would be overwhelmed with a weird smokiness, but actually the bacon wasn't as in-your-face as feared. What it did bring was that delicate fusion of salty and sweet that works so well in baked goods, but with a little bacon-y goodness that brings up the rear. Jeff thought I was crazy for even trying it, but he reluctantly gave in and had to know how they came out. He said "Okay... we need to somehow put these on a stick and sell them at the fair - they are weirdly addicting!". Would it work with plain crisped bacon, instead of going the extra length to coat it with the sugary dressing? Maybe, but applying that extra layer of sweetness worked in our favor by knocking back any "meatiness" that might have become a hindrance.

Now, I'm sure the combo of chocolate and bacon might disgust some... but really, don't knock it until you have tried it! It may not be for all, and I'm sure some might have not expected I actually followed through with the request, but just remember, they asked for it! Hee hee! I don't think this is something I would make on a regular basis or for just any reason, but it was fun for it's novel factor if nothing else.

Recipes
Crispy Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies