I’m looking at a stack of paper, notebook rippings, scrawled on napkins, and shopping lists beside me that consist of all sort of recipes marked as “in progress”. Today’s project was to organize and bound them all together. Pen, hole punch, and binder in hand: I cranked up some Beyonce and dove at the pile. Once I was done, I thought it might be fun to share some of the recipes with everyone. Please bare in mind that they are in progress. I’ll make notes of what I’m still looking for in them and maybe you can solve what I haven’t in your own culinary adventures!
First up, Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies! I’ve made two batches of these now and sent them over to my taste testers at Three Rings Design. Most of the reviews were a long the lines of “I don’t like to mix sweet and savory”; but the folks that mash all their food together thought that the bacon was a little to subtle and abrupt because it just had bacon bits in it. This is the recipe that has bacon bits in it. Next time around I think I’m going to also substitute some bacon fat for butter.
5 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups butter
1 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 packs of smoked bacon
22 oz. dark chocolate chips
4 eggs
3 tsp. vanilla
-cream room temperature butter with sugars.
-add eggs one at a time, allowing each to incorporate fully.
-add vanilla. Scrape the bowl and paddle.
-add dries. Scrape the bowl and paddle.
-cook, drain, cool, and crumble bacon then add to the mix.
-add chocolate chips.
-bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.
-This yields a lot of cookies, so maybe cut it in half.
Hey, been mulling over your quandry.
One idea I had involves the way you treat the bacon. I would use whole slab bacon not sliced bacon. Double smoked bacon would also be my bacon of choice as it’s less floppy and watery and will cube and cook better. I’d then first trim down the bacon seperating the larger layers of fat from the meat reserving the fat. You won’t want to be TOO thorough with the trimming as you still want the bacon to cook in fat. Dice the meat to a small dice or even a brunoise if you’ve got the patience. Saute those bits over a medium to medium high heat nice and slow so as to get nice and crispy, the idea being that they will crunch like bacon crystals when they are eventually eaten (and will also keep longer if they’re not eaten immediately). Try to remove the bacon bits from the pan while leaving as much of the liquid fat in the pan. Using that fat as a starter you can then render down the slabs of bacon fat you reserved earlier. Cut those up too if you want to speed up the process. Use that fat as a smokey substitute for some of your butter.
I haven’t actually tested your recipe yet but this should help get you the most bacon flavour for your buck.
One other idea I thought of while typing this was to sprinkle a bit of granulated sugar and salt on top of the cookies before baking them. Maybe a 2:1 sugar to salt ratio.
Good luck.