Super Bowl Sunday: Greenbay may have won the Lombardi trophy, but we brought home the bacon!

We headed to Gaithersburg Sunday to watch the big game at the home of our good friends Lori and Eric.  When Lori invited me over and mentioned that Eric would be making “snacks”, I had a sneaking suspicion we’d be eating well.  Still, I think I started drooling as soon as I saw this menu.  I should probably go ahead and add that nothing on it came from the store; this wasn’t your typical spread of chips and salsa spread sprinkled with frozen mozzarella sticks and buffalo wings; this was all made from scratch. 

I have to admit this was my first experience with deep-fried bacon, but I can hardly say I was skeptical.  Bacon, breaded, cooked in grease… how can it not be good?  And how can it not be even better dipped in jalapeno ranch? (Answer: it’s not possible)

Still, I have to say that the cheese bread was my favorite item on the table (which says a lot, given my avocado obsession) and possibly the best thing I’ve eaten all year (which says a lot given my recent restaurant week binge) .  This was essentially a round loaf of homemade yeast bread, stuffed with cheese and topped with butter and salt.  Eric made it sound extremely simple to make, but it was just so doughy and salty and… well,  and he’s promised me the recipe, so perhaps you’ll get to see my attempt!

Even though I was assured I didn’t need to bring anything, get togethers are my excuse to make the recipes I really want to try but don’t necessarily need leftovers of sitting around my house.  I happened to have the perfect one on hand: Bacon Salted Caramel Brownies.  I mentioned in a previous post my desire to test out my new-found obsession with bacon in desserts in my own kitchen, and I’ve had this recipe from Tasty Kitchen bookmarked for the right occasion (read: those involving adventurous, non-calorie counting carnivores; sorry Mom).

If you were a fly on the wall of my kitchen as I made these (or more appropriately, a mouse… we have a lot more of those this time of year) you would have observed the epitome of what I describe as my ‘chaotic, sometimes even frantic’ cooking style.  I woke up early and figured that the two hours I had before I needed to leave for my spin class would be more than enough to make brownies.  WRONG.

I doubled the recipe because I wanted enough brownies to bring to work as an apology to a few co-workers who were unfortunate enough to experience the black beans brownies I made during my last experimental-phase in the kitchen: vegan baked goods.  This proved to be a  challenge for my forgetful pre-coffee brain.  

I have a confession to make. Prepare to be shocked.  Until about a month ago, I had never in my entire life cooked bacon.  My bacon consumption was always at the hands of my grandmother or a restaurant.   My first attempt came while making pan-seared scallops with bacon and spinach, and it was not pretty.  In fact, I burnt it horribly and asked Courtney to make a new batch.  Later that same week I was back at the frying pan making bacon ranch mac and cheese.  Apparently it just requires patience, an ingredient I rarely have on hand.  Anyways, for the brownies I started by frying up four slices of center-cut, uncured bacon very slowly while also chopping the butter; I set the bacon aside, added the heavy cream to the grease left in the pan and allowed it to cool. 

Next up was heating the sugar.  I was really, really concerned about burning the sugar (did I mention I’m not very patient?)  Courtney, who must have smelled the bacon and finally made his way down to the kitchen, found me nervously stirring the sugar and said “how ironic, in the dream I just woke up from Harry Potter and his friends were struggling with a really difficult potion.”  Reassuring.

Anyways, I successfully melted the sugar to a perfect amber brown and added the cream/bacon grease mixture and… this was my first ‘oh shit’ moment; when measuring the butter, I’d forgotten I was doubling the recipe.  Luckily, I’d also measured and cut up the butter for the batter so I had enough on hand; I then stirred in the bacon and battaboom! bacon salted caramel. 

I then whipped up the brownie batter (second ‘oh shit’ moment: I’m three eggs short; I love roommates, and IOU notes).  Because I only have 9×9 pans, I didn’t have enough batter to make two full pans of brownies (‘oh shit’ moment #3, not that anyone’s counting).  I decided to make one regular tray of brownies and then make the rest in a (very well-greased) muffin pan.  This actually worked out really well!  I still layered the caramel both in between and on top of the brownie batter.  The cooking time was shorter (I’d check on them right around 20 minutes), they didn’t take as long to cool, and the muffin tins were much less messy because they didn’t have to be cut. 

I didn’t time these perfectly, and had to leave them uncooked in the fridge while I went to spin class reeking of bacon.  Still, overall I’d call these a huge success! (I think my friends prefer my bacon phase to my vegan phase; sorry again, Mom!)  Even better?  I have a Tupperware in my fridge of bacon salted caramel, just waiting to be used: Stay Tuned!

Johanna