(( Hi, Jes! I found you via comic archives, so maybe I’m a geek, but I’m also a pastry student and I guess I feel like I can connect with you. Sort of. ))

My point isn’t the temperature though, my point is she’s hiding more then just an ingredient from you, for Chef Grandmas are tricky people, they like to mess with your brain.

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.

←↑↓→ Let the games begin.

A couple of people have already used the recipe you sent me, some incidentally for their own birthdays. Strange timing. They are all saying thank you for the recipe!