Bachoconlate chip cookies

By Todd Stadler · Friday, December 21, 2007 8:40pm

After seeing a recipe for bacon chocolate chip cookies floating around the Internet (notably at my friend Sarah's blog), I knew I had to make them. No, I knew I was destined to make them.

After all, what is my favorite type of cookie? Chocolate chip. Too many other cookies try too hard — 16 different stir-in ingredients plus two glazes and a dusting of ... come on, you're still nowhere near as tasty as a beautiful (that is to say, slightly underbaked) chocolate chip cookie! You cannot improve on perfection!

Unless ... Unless, that is, you add my favorite food, bacon. Bacon makes everything better! (Yes, I know, from a purely poetic vantage, cheddar makes everything better because it rhymes, or maybe butter makes everything better because it's only one letter different, but these cookies do not lack for butter, and bacon still gives a nice bit of alliteration, so please put down your copy of Leaves of Grass and join us back in the world of tasty food, okay? Thanks.)

Like I said, bacon makes everything better. That is my hypothesis, and I had yet to find any contrary data, but this recipe for bacon in a cookie would certainly put it to the test.

First, a word to those of you still staring glassy-eyed at the screen, quietly muttering "He didn't ... ew!" Please! Have you ever had bacon with your pancakes? (If you answered no, stop reading now. No, seriously ... just stop.) Have you ever had chocolate chip pancakes? How about ... bacon with chocolate chip pancakes? And sweet, sweet maple syrup? Then don't pretend that you think my cookies are gross.

You're getting hung up on context: "Meat should not go in cookies!" Fine, it's a breakfast item. A breakfast item called, um ... galette de morceau de chocolat et lard. See, doesn't that sound better? (No? You're hung up on the fact that the French for bacon is lard, aren't you? You're hopeless.) But seriously, it's got bacon and eggs in it. And butter and flour. Sounds like breakfast to me!

Moving on! I made the cookies, more or less following the aforementioned recipe, but with a few alterations, noted below:

The original recipe called for a maple glaze, but I'm sorry, I can't stomach maple glaze. If you're really jonesing for maple flavor, follow the recipe above and drizzle pure maple syrup over the top. But maple glaze? Might as well coat it in vomit. Your mileage may vary.

Now, a note on bacon bits. It goes without saying that I didn't use fake bacon bits (a.k.a., obviously, fakon bits) — cookies and defatted soy flour simply do not mix! But given my mildly obsessive personality (hello, I'm making bacon chocolate chip cookies here!), I felt it would be cheating to buy canned bacon bits.

The original recipe said that you'd need about two pounds of bacon to make the two cups of bits that the recipe calls for. So I went out and got two pounds of New Seasons' finest bacon — applewood smoked (no pepper, duh), thick-cut, the champagne of bacon. Or, if you will, the bacon of bacon.

And I think that was a mistake. First of all, it was, um, expensive. Gah! Let us not speak of the price. Suffice to say that I briefly doubted my commitment to Sparkle Motion bacon. But then I remembered what I was dealing with here: namely, bacon. So I bought it anyhow.

But more to the point, the bacon was too thick to get crispy enough. Now if I were having it on the side of a breakfast plate, I'd say the bacon was perfect — meaty, salty, chewy, with just enough crisp.

But in a cookie, "meaty" and "chewy" is kind of weird (I know, one of you is thinking, "But bacon in cookies is weird!", but didn't I ask you to stop reading already?). What I wanted the bacon in the cookies to be was, above all (well, after "bacony"), crisp. I could have done that better by buying a package of thin-cut bacon.

Also, at least with thick-cut bacon, two pounds makes more than two cups of bits! Not that I'm complaining — leftover bacon isn't left over very long in our house.

So, fourteen paragraphs and one recipe in, and I still haven't told you how they turned out. I'm sure you're on tenterhooks. ("Tenter-what"? "Shh, he's about to tell us how the cookies were.")

Fig. A: The only cookies at the cookie swap with a "Non-vegetarian!" warning label

They were ... fine. Honestly, given that there were equal amounts of bacon and chocolate chips, I felt the cookies were far more chocolatey than bacony. Which was odd. "Bacon makes everything better", right? Not "bacon makes everything slightly different but about as good".

Like I said, I feel that thinner, crispier bacon would have increased the bacon flavor while decreasing the odd meaty chewiness. But still, the bacon did add a nice bit of salt, and what bacon flavor there was melded nicely with the almond extract.

And even if the flavor wasn't revolutionary, the mere existence of the cookies sent some of my nerdier friends into fits of euphoria. So that's nice.