Introduction: Chocolate Bacon!

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Since we all know that bacon is the new cupcake, I decided to see what sort of mayhem I could wreak on my dear friend's chocolate party. Hopefully tasty, tasty mayhem and adventure!

Step 1: Prep and Cook the Bacon, Also Facon

This is where you cook up ungodly quantities of bacon.

This is one case where better quality bacon may be ideal... I purchased the sale stuff and it was sub-optimal.

Large Frying pan and oven baking tray are good methods for real bacon.

The Microwave method was used for cooking the Facon. Resist the urge to dip facon in bacon grease. It does little good.

Cut up the bacon/ facon into pieces a couple inches long, and set aside.

Step 2: Prepare and Fill Double Boiler

Unless you have a double boiler, you will need to rig one up. This keeps the chocolate from burning, and heating unevenly.

Put a smaller pan inside a larger pan of water, if your pans have handles, place a suitable spoon, shot glass, or other riser in the water under the smaller pan to help keep the contraption level.

Break up your chocolate and put some in the smaller pan, and turn the heat on to medium (avoid rolling boils, as it will spit water into your chocolate)

(NB: at this point we used Hershey's baking bar... which was described as "slightly sweet" -- we used the Ghiradelli to dip the Spam into later)

Step 3: Add/Prepare Additional Ingredients

While the chocolate is melting, be sure to stir it often.

Place finely chopped nuts (both walnuts and pecans were used), on a foil-lined tray to be toasted -- we used the toaster oven for this.

When slightly bittersweet chocolate is almost melted, add some maple syrup and some brown sugar.

Stir until homogeneous.

Step 4: It Puts the Bacon in the Chocolate...

If you have vegetarian friends, do the facon first.... or set up two double boilers. (and for the record, the facon isn't too bad!)

Facon is notoriously fragile, so, I would recomend laying the piece on the chocolate, and then flipping it over gently.

Bacon is a little more resilient, if not cooked to an uber crisp. You can more emphatically dip these pieces vertically.

I've found that it was received well to leave a bit of the meat sticking out of the chocolate, just so people know what they were getting into. It was also easier and quicker... but a full dip preserves mystery -- which may be a desirable quality.


Step 5: Awww, NUTS!

Remove each piece from the chocolate and place it in a bowl of nuts, and roll it around before transferring it to a foil lined plate.

Step 6: Freeze!

We labeled ours, since we did both bacon and facon.

Then move the whole plate to the freezer for about an hour. This hardens the chocolate -- otherwise it would remain gooey at room temperature.

Step 7: Chocolate Dipped Spam!

We had a *ton* of chocolate left, so we had to find other things to dip.

We found a can of spam up in the upper cupboards, and cooked that up... the thinner sliced, and crispier the better! in fact if it is cut as show, it will taste like chocolate dipped cat-food. Then thin and crispy, its not so bad.

The Spam was fragile, so we spooned the chocolate onto it and handled it delicately. If it were thin and crisp, it would be very resilient.

Step 8: Dregs Bacon Brittle!

In addition to still having more chocolate, we also had a lot of bacon, but a limited amount of time, so we
-baked the bacon to an uber crisp into a "brick" on a foil covered cookie-tray.

-cooled it on paper towels, to wick away extra grease.

-poured all the remaining chocolate over it.

-sprinkled all the remaining nuts over it.

-froze the tray and then cut into squares to serve.

Step 9: Find Guinea Pigs...

...I mean tasters.

Roommates work well. He was suitably horrified. But his palate is not sophisticated.

I tasted each one, the quality of the chocolate *really* does matter here. Also white sugar and molasses is not as tasty as brown sugar.

Then bring to a party and foist the chocolate bacon off on your friends and foist the chocolate spam off on your enemies! voila!