Maple Bacon Cookies

Why not kick this blog off with a recipe that I got lots of requests about, and ultimately inspired starting this.  Also these were damn tasty and bacon is bacon.


Here's the original recipe (from The Republican Extra, June 19, 2013):
1 lb maple bacon
1/2 c unsalted butter, room temperature
1 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c maple sugar, plus additional for sprinkling
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t flake sea salt, plus additional for sprinkling
1/2 t maple extract
2 eggs
2 3/4 c all purpose flour
11.5 oz bag milk chocolate chips

Cook bacon until browned and crispy
Transfer bacon to paper towels to drain and cool, reserve bacon grease in skillet
When cool chop/crumble bacon
Preheat oven to 375, line baking sheets with parchment paper
Mix together butter, 1/2 c bacon grease, brown sugar, maple sugar, baking soda, salt, and maple extract until light and fluffy
Add eggs one at a time, beating and scraping the bowl in between
Mix in flour, then chocolate chips, then bacon
Scoop onto baking sheets in 1 T mounds, sprinkle lightly with maple sugar and sea salt
Bake 10 - 12 minutes

What I did:
Lets start off changing the first ingredient, used regular thick cut bacon rather than thinly sliced maple bacon.  Hey, I like my bacon thick, don't judge me.  Diced bacon before hand and then cooked.  This change is likely more stylistic than anything, but I might as well make note of it.  Had I cooked the strips whole until crispy I would have likely gotten more crumbling, but I'm fine with the little bacon chunks my method produced.  I wanted a softer bacon rather than a crunchy bacon anyways.

I didn't have maple sugar or extract, but I had a gallon of maple syrup.  I mean really, why would I want to use maple extract?  The conversion for maple sugar to syrup is supposed to be 1/2 c sugar = 1 c syrup, and reduce other liquid by 1/4 c.  Only there wasn't really any liquid, so I added a random amount of flour until it looked good (possibly 3.5 c instead of the 2.75?). 

A small difference in flavor in what I bake is I use turbinated sugar not white. I also used some of the bacon greased when I was cooking dinner, so I put in maybe a quarter cup at most of bacon grease.  I swear this is not at all because I failed to properly read the entire recipe before getting started. 

Copious sampling of the cookie dough inspired the addition of vanilla extract (no, I did not measure) and a little more syrup.  If you wish to follow my example add until it tastes good.  Just don't use the mixer to mix in the chocolate chips.  I also completely failed to sprinkle anything on top of the cookies before (or after) baking them.

Recommendations:
Parchment paper is awesome.  Don't skip that step

Refrigerate your cookies.  They're not going to exactly spoil right away, but after 2-3 days I can say I enjoyed the cookies that I stored in the fridge over the ones in a tin in the break room at work.

I'm no expert, but I think the biggest reason to watch how much cookie dough you eat here is to not over ingest unreacted baking soda.  I totally felt like I something was bubbling away in my tummy, but maybe that was my imagination.  Still totally worth it.

If you seriously deeply care about losing weight or a diet don't eat these cookies.  Yeah, I totally wish I could be a bit slimmer, but then I eat cookies like these and decide my squishy bits are totally worth it.

What I would like to do next time:
I'm totally candying the bacon with maple syrup next time, maybe a little bourbon or whiskey as well.   This stands even if I do use a maple bacon to start.

I also think this would go better with dark chocolate chips.  In fact I meant to use dark chocolate chips than discovered the chips on hand were milk chocolate.

Further reduction of grease, I actually was craving a less smooth, chunky textured cookie.  I had a very smooth buttery cookie.