Bacon & Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don't recall where I first began plotting to make these cookies. It may have been Caz who spied a recent post, but then maybe I am just associating this with her given the combo of bacon & chocolate.  Then again maybe I stumbled across the post myself, but somewhere along the line I fear that the recipe may have become a little mashed up as when I confronted myself with it, bacon, eggs and chocolate all out ready to go, I came to the realisation that these cookies I had dreamed about were not going to work. So I pulled out my trusty iPhone and the plethora of food & recipe related apps I've downloaded and trawled through until I found something that I thought just might work. 

Enter closetcooking.com . This blog by Toronto-dweller Kevin was just what I was looking for. Now he had obviously taken the time to plan his cookies, what with candying the bacon and keeping little candied bacon pieces to decorate with, but I wasn't quite that fancy. All I was after was a slightly salty slightly sweet treat that would take me about 1 period of hockey to pull together, then an intermission and a period later they'd be baked, cooled and ready to go. Perfect.  Luckily I had everything on hand for Kevin's recipe so I jumped right in and before you could say hey presto (or the Wings could look like things were going downhill fast and a very morose husband stomped out of the room) I had cookies! 

Well, almost.  Rather than switching out some of the butter for bacon grease I just dripped a little in at the end. I also wanted to get these babies ready to go since we were planning on heading out for the second game of the evening, so I tried to get a little fancy on the process and froze my cookie dough balls for 10-15 minutes before baking. None of this worked. What I ended up with was a tray cookie, thin and golden, and filling my kitchen with the aroma of bacon and chocolate.  By this time the Wings had scored a goal and the husband was stepping back from ledge* in time to suggest a pizza cutter, friend Jonny sent an enthusiastic message of 'success!' and I got on it. 

So these are by no means the cutest cookies in the jar. Not by a long way. But they were quick, they are damn tasty and the fulfilled my dream of a bacon & chocolate cookie. I know you're curious, go make these. Now!

1/2 cup butter (softened, feel free to replace some with bacon grease)
1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/8 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark chocolate chunks
5 strips bacon, sliced, then cooked until crispy and drained on paper towels

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl and then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Mix the flour, baking soda and salt in another bowl and then mix the dry ingredients into the wet. Mix in the chocolate and the bacon pieces. Shape into cookies and place on a baking-paper lined cookie sheet (If I were to make these again I would try popping them in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to see if this helped the cookie tray cookie effect). Bake in a 350F preheated oven for 8-10 minutes.

If you do end up with the cookie tray cookie effect, leave them to cool for a short while, but not too long before you slice them up with a pizza cutter. You want them to be still a little moist and malleable when you're cutting so they don't snap.

*The Wings tied things up right on the buzzer and held the Sabres off through overtime to take the game in the shootout. Wil was stoked.