Tim's Bacon Birthday Bash 2010

This whole fiasco started with a thought of making candied bacon!  I found one good recipe that I followed, but I tweaked it and want to pass on those tips to you!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32078869@N00/3115496119/

A lot of blogs recips say to start with thick cut bacon.  Over the course of this bacon bash I used both regular cut and thick cut and found that as far as taste and texture they were both equally tasty! 

Ingredients:
Bacon
Brown sugar

Equipment:
Jelly roll pan

Aluminum foil (it works better than the parchment paper as some suggest)

Preheat oven to 350, line the jelly roll pans or cookie sheets with aluminum foil.  I found that partially freezing (about 15min in freezer works) the bacon makes it easier to cut in half.  Place the bacon on the foil, it can be touching, but do not overlap the pieces.  Coat each piece with brown sugar, sprinkle it on and then pat it into the meat.
Bake for 12-15min, then take the pan out and swirl the bacon in the juices on the bottom of the pan and then flip each piece over and bake for another 12-15min.  I prefer my bacon to be crisp, where as others like it a little less crisp. 

Once its done place the bacon on cooling racks (over paper towels) until cool.  Then the fun can really begin!

I made Candied Bacon Chocolate Chip cookies, the recipe is the basic Tollhouse Cookie recipe (found in the blog I posed above), and I used 1/2lb candied bacon, milk chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate chunks. 

As an extra bonus to the festivities I made candied bacon dipped in chocoloate and some of them sprinkled with chopped toasted almonds. 

Also I made bacon wrapped dates and deviled eggs filled with bacon bits and cheddar cheese.


All in all everyone loved the candied bacon in its many forms!