This weekend is  BaconFest, a local fundraiser event hosted by our local roller derby team, and even though I’m not taking the bacon & maple cheesecake I’d hoped to experiment with (I didn’t experiment with anything of the sort), as I’d intended, I still have this bacon idea on the brain. And a slab ‘o meat in the fridge that needs cooked up too.

So, as experiments go, here’s the results of this one:

First, dredge 5 strips of raw bacon through gently heated brown sugar ( I zapped mine in the micro for about 20 seconds, til it was warm and sticky but not “wet.” Put your pig parts on a cookie sheet and pop into a 375 degree oven for about twenty minutes, or whatever it takes for the bacon to become crisp and carmelized. Let it cool, then snap it up into little bite-size pieces. It’s a good thing I used five strips as two of them burnt beyond that carcinogenic yumminess crispy bacon has, so I didn’t have quite as much as I wanted. Oh well.

Next I made a regular chocolate-chip cookie dough, thank you Better Homes and Gardens for your recipe.

Mix 1 1/2 sticks butter and 1/4 C. shortening. Add 1/2 C. sugar, 1 C. packed brown sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla together.

Add 3/4 tsp. baking soda and 1/2 tsp. salt.  Add 2 eggs and beat until combined. Mix in 2 1/2 C. flour, then add your chips (I used 1 C. chocolate and 1 C. white chocolate ) and then add dried cherries or cranberries (that’s not part of the BH&G recipe).  Add the bacon. If you want to add nuts, dump them in now.

Give ‘er a good mix, then spoon out onto your cookie sheet in little ball-shaped mounds.

Bake for about 8 minutes and let cool a bit on the sheet. By my estimate this recipe makes about 30  cookies.  The bacon flavor wasn’t as noticeable throughout in the cookie I sampled, but I think it would have been, had I not lost two pieces of bacon to the overzealous oven. When I did bite into that perfect  intersection of chocolate, white chocolate and bacon however, the combo was delightful.