Bacon Brittle

As previously mentioned, on January 1 I’ll be hosting a party. My freak out level is still running fairly high but the fact that I’m finally making progress on planning and preparing for the event is helping a bit.

Today I made the first dish: Bacon Brittle. Yes, that really is candy which contains bacon (and pecans). It’s not as strange as it sounds. After all, a lot of people enjoy syrup on their bacon or sausage in the morning. And many meat preparations involve a sweet (often fruit-based) sauce or garnish, right? So bacon brittle isn’t that revolutionary an idea.

The process was very straight forward and I experienced no real problems. There were two minor inconveniences, however:

1. The recipe’s edict to “…pour the hot mixture onto the prepared baking sheet as thinly as possible” does not mention that “as thinly as possible” might just be about half an inch or so. The mixture was cooling rapidly by the time I’d finished mixing in the final ingredients so it did not pour easily and my brittle ended up rather thick in places.
2. It’s raining here today. Any cook worth their kosher salt will tell you that these are less than ideal conditions for making candy. Sugar is hygroscopic, so I was concerned for how the candy would firm up. It turns out there was little reason to worry as it ended up very crispy (rather than the chewy I feared), but I wasted no time in breaking it into bits and stowing it away in airtight containers.

“How does it taste?” you ask? A lot like your usual run-of-the-mill brittle, really. The bacon is obviously there but it’s subtle. As a matter of fact if I ever make this again I intend to use more bacon since I was hoping for a good solid hit of sugar-coated bacon flavor. I think this batch will be about the right speed for my guests though. And, yes, I do intend to label the serving bowl clearly. It seems rude to do otherwise.