Bacon Bit Chocolate Chip Cookies
Something Sweet, Something Salty
I promised the girls from camp that I would send them cookies, because I love to bake and I love to have someone to give my baked goods too (mostly so I don't eat them all). One little camper requested white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.
Here's the thing: I have absolutely no troubles from eating too many macadamia nut cookies because I'm allergic to nuts. But as a loving counselor, I obliged, and found a delicious recipe to make for her. I know it's delicious because I tasted the dough before I added the nuts. And it left me wanting more.
Have You Tried It?
Have you tried a dessert with Bacon in it?
The Search for a Source of Saltiness
This cookie dough tasted so good, and I've recently realized that white chocolate, when paired with another flavor, is actually really good. I've never really been a fan of white chocolate, but mixed with milk chocolate or peanut butter, it's pretty delicious. I wanted to make another batch for me, with extra chocolate chips and no nuts.
But sweet and salty are so good together, I felt like I was missing out on something. What else is salty that could actually go into a cookie...? Think, think, think.
The Secret Ingredient
Bacon Bit
-Line a bowl with tin foil and pour the bacon grease into it. When it is cooled, wrap it up in a ball and throw it away!
Bacon! Bacon is salty, and bacon is becoming a trendy thing to put in sweets. Perfect! I will add bacon to my cookies!
Bacon and chocolate seem to be paired together a lot, so I thought, to be on the safe side, I should add more chocolate to these cookies. Chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, and bacon. Yep, that sounds about right.
Bacon Bits
Life Lessons
I am realizing that if I want to bake cookies my whole life, and I always lick off the spoon when I'm done, that is a whole heck of a lot of butter and sugar I'm consuming. So I am trying to be brave, and put the spoon...and the beater...and the rubber spatula...and the bowl into the sink without licking the batter. It's a tad bit easier when there's something in the dough you're allergic to.
But I should also warn you, if the beaters of your electric mixer are dirty because you bake cookies too often, and you are too lazy to wash them after you already washed and dried ALL the mixing bowls AND the cookie sheets, you can use a pastry blender to mix your butter and sugar together, but it is not as fun to lick as the beaters. It is a wee bit sharper. Oh it can be done, just be careful.
The Pastry Blender
Rate this Recipe
Oven: 325 F
Bake: 12-14 minutes
Yields: 2 1/2 dozen cookies, depending on how much dough you eat beforehand.
Cookie Tips
-Refrigerate the dough for about an hour before baking for chewier cookies. If you are impatient like me, just refrigerate the leftover dough while the cookies are baking.
-Make sure you taste-test the dough before baking!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
- 1/3 cup white sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 2 T cocoa powder
- 3 strips bacon, cooked and broken into small pieces
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips, (or milk chocolate)
- 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
- Cook bacon and let it cool. Tear the strips into tiny pieces and discard the excessively fatty pieces.
- In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugars. Add in egg and vanilla.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa. Add to larger bowl.
- Stir the flour into the dough and then add the chocolate chips and bacon bits.
- Place by rounded spoonful onto a greased cookie sheet and bake at 325 F for 12-14 minutes.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool on cookie sheet for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire cooling rack.