Bacon! How Do I Love Thee!



Bacon!  The smell makes my mouth water.  What is it that makes bacon so good?  Just the right amount of salt, mixed with a little fat, and tender pieces of pork that taste like nothing else.  I like mine just a little bit on the side of crispy.  Not too crispy, though.  My friend Toni told me how to make bacon without totally greasing up my stove.  I line a cookie sheet with foil and lay my bacon on top.  I cook it for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  It's perfect...  Once the pan cools down, I take the foil and toss it. 



For this cupcake, I cooked about 6 slices and made them crispy.  Once cooled, I chopped them up.  I used a vanilla cake base, but it had real maple syrup in the batter.  Oh My Goodness!  I could have eaten the cupcakes all by themselves.  The maple made the cake so moist and taste quite rich.  Yum! 

The cupcakes had blueberries and bacon in the batter.  Once I put the batter into the pan, I added a couple of blueberries to the top of each one.  They baked up wonderfully!  They also smelled divinely.

While they were cooking I made Cream Cheese Frosting with Maple Syrup.  It was sooooo good!  Believe me, I was skeptical about bacon and blueberries in a cupcake.  But I'm a convert! 

I used a piece of bacon and crumbled it on top of the cupcakes. 

THE VERDICT:  These were fantastic!  While Roger, Zane, Katie, and Sam were on their mission trip, Zack, Nate, and I flew up to Ohio to visit our friends and pick up a car.  I wanted to take them some cupcakes, so I got a pretty cupcake box from Hobby Lobby.  I held 6 cupcakes.  I was able to fly them all the way to Ohio.  I guess people take baked goods through security more than I realized.  We had no trouble.  We delivered them to our friends and they liked them...a lot!  I've already made these again...as mini-cupcakes.  They're awesome.