I’m not a food blogger. Or a foodie. Or even that outstanding of a cook. Most of my culinary successes are unrepeatable accidents. Which, I’m fine with, I reckon. But, still.
Not long ago, while in Manhattan, KS visiting some dear friends, one of said friends needed Christmas cookies for something. Now, we are both big fans of food. We both like food a whole lot. But when good ol’ Jodi, the Bacon Queen, suggested that we make a recipe that was legendary according to both of our books…well, we jumped at the idea.
We have this friend named Katie. Katie lives in North Dakota and has an amazing blog called The Pinke Post. Katie has also played a big role in my career as a former supervisor and a continued mentor. Katie is a working mom, a Rockin’ Rural Woman, the primary cook of the household, and all-around professional-and-domesticated Goddess.
And she makes chocolate bacon almond brittle.
So, of course, we tried it too.
Needless to say, we made two batches: one to learn with and one to send to a friend.
Jodi and I are not culinary geniuses. Nor are either of us particularly agile or coordinated. For the full recipe, I’ll defer you over to The Pinke Post (the hyperlink for bacon almond brittle takes you straight to the recipe) BUT I WILL explain to you a few things about this experience.
For starters, if you’re going to make chocolate bacon almond brittle, you’re going to WANT to have two people there. Jodi and I kept asking each other, “How did Katie do this on her own?” Well, Katie has the Superwoman gene whereas Jodi and I both fall into the “endearingly dysfunctional” category. While adding the bacon and almonds to the caramel-y type brittle mixture, it was handy to have Jodi stirring while I added ingredients.
Spreading the chocolate and then the brittle mixture was a pretty tricky process, as well. And since neither of us are seasoned veterans of the culinary world, we were a little terrified of knowing when the caramel-type brittle mixture was done. For some reason, we never felt that it got to be the “right” color.
Luckily it turned out alright but was still a source of concern. Also, make sure your chocolate is melted to a thin enough consistency. Ours was on the thick side and made it harder to spread out, therefore harder to get thin enough to match the right overall texture.
In general, our brittle was delicious. Our test batch was, maybe, a bit too thick. (It was still INCREDIBLY delicious, though, even on the thicker side.) But, we made a friends pact to make that brittle again. And next time, we’d have a streamlined, optimized system to it. And we’ll use more bacon.
Because, you always need more bacon.