You love French toast with bacon, but goodness knows it doesn’t really work that well as a party dish, or as something to snack on while you’re driving.  Wouldn’t it be great if it could be as convenient as, say, a cupcake?

[photo: livejournal/sweetkisses0530]

This is one of the most popular items to ever emerge from the Ministry of Bacon kitchens.  It was a smash hit in its appearance at a recent Charm City Roller Girls roller derby bout, and it was the star attraction at one of our Bacon & Beer Happy Hour events at Bad Decisions in Baltimore.  At the time, when asked for the recipe, we could easily give people a link to find the cupcake instructions on a great blog called Bake and Destroy…but alas, that blog is gone for good.  The recipe for the maple glaze still exists at its original source on LiveJournal…but we figured it’s about time to give you both recipes together.

First, the recipe for the French Toast Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted then cooled.
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. maple extract
• 1/2 cup whole milk

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line your muffin tin with baking liners.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a mixing bowl.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar, and eggs until combined. Then add the maple extract.
4. Alternate between whisking in the flour mixture and the milk into your liquid mixture:  Make three additions of flour and two of milk (flour mixture, milk, flour mixture, milk, flour mixture).  Beat until smooth.
5. Pour the batter into the cupcake liners and bake for 20-25 minutes until they’re golden brown and the tops spring back when lightly touched.
6. Cool the  cupcakes for 10 minutes, then remove them from the pan and allow them to cool completely before frosting.

And now, the recipe for the maple glaze!

Ingredients:

• 2 c. powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tbsp. butter, softened
• 3-4 tbsp. milk
• 1/2 tsp. maple flavoring

Directions:

1. Combine powdered sugar, vanilla, maple flavoring, butter and milk.  (To make it even more maple-y, High Priestess Anna usually adds a decent amount of real maple syrup into the recipe.)
2. Stir well until the mixture has the consistency of a glaze.
3. Finally, cook up a ton of bacon till it’s nearly crunchy, then cut up the strips into teeny squares and sprinkle ‘em on top of the frosting. (If you like, you can cook the bacon till it’s crunchy and just crumble it, but that may not be as pretty.)

[photo: blogspot/sckain]

It’s probably safe to assume that there were more bacon explosions being served on Super Bowl Sunday this year than in any year past.   So if you were a host, how could you make sure that your party would be the talk of the bacon world?

BBQ Addicts—the guys who invented the original bacon explosion—have discovered that a guy by the name of Ben “Sweet Lou” Krout didn’t merely figure out how to make a bacon dish worthy of a trophy; he made a bacon dish that WAS a trophy.

Behold…a Lombardi Trophy made out of bacon…the BACOMBARDI TROPHY.

For those who had the good fortune of attending Ben’s party, we’re sure this was a bigger WIN than anything Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints experienced that evening.

(via via via via)

Yesterday, I was looking to grab a quick and cheap bite to eat, and remembered that Burger King was featuring their beefy double cheeseburger for a dollar.  Naturally, I thought to myself, “I should go the extra step and ask them to add bacon to it.”  The extra cost was 60 cents, which seemed reasonable for what I thought I’d be getting.

Cure the ominous music here.

The good news: There were five strips of bacon on my double cheeseburger.

The bad news: The strips of bacon were about three inches long and barely half an inch wide.  In fact, had they been much smaller, they probably would have qualified to be called bacon bits.

I ate some of the bacon by itself, and found it to be the most generic, tasteless bacon I’d ever had.  In a blind taste test, I might not have even thought it was bacon, but rather a thin slice from some sort of bland meat stick.

I put the rest of the bacon on the burger and took a few bites.  Predictably, the flavor of the bacon mini-strips was almost completely drowned out by the rest of the sandwich.

Now, I’m sure there’s a good chance that Burger King has two grades of bacon, and saves the better grade for their more expensive, premium burgers.  (After all, even though Wendy’s has introduced a new, thick-sliced applewood bacon for their Bacon Deluxe and Baconator burgers, their original thinner and unspectacular bacon is still being used for their Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers.)  However, I can’t imagine a reasonable explanation for the little laces of bacon I got on my burger.  This wasn’t one of those times when the cook is at the bottom of the pan, and tries to use up what’s left by giving you enough crumbles to make up for the strips you’re not getting; the size of these strips seemed very intentional and purposeful.

I realize that BK probably uses a different grade of bacon on their pricier burgers, but there’s no excuse for giving someone bacon that undermines even the lowest of expectations, even on a burger that only cost a buck to begin with.  McDonald’s and Wendy’s have realized that high-quality ingredients are what attracts today’s discriminating customer, so they’d be smart to devoting more attention to what’s on the customer’s tray and less attention to producing booty-filled hip hop videos for their creepy mascot.

Goodness knows that there’s no shortage of bacon recipes available on the web, but if you want to add to your skills with some in-person experience, the options are not quite as plentiful.  Luckily, we here at the Ministry are looking out for your best interests.

If you live in the Wasington, D.C. metropolitan area — or if you’ll be there for Thanksgiving weekend — recreational cooking school (and wine bar and retail store) Cookology will be offering a whole day of classes on Sunday, November 29th, during which you can learn how to make all sorts of fantastic bacon dishes.  The class schedule and details of each session are as follows:

• Baking Breads with Bacon, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.:

If the rock band Creed felt as passionately as we do about the allure of a bacon breakfast, Pat from the Zappos blog team thinks this is how they might have written their hit song “My Own Prison”.

As many of you head into another party weekend, we present what might be the most impressive hip hop video about bacon we’ve ever seen, from a relative unknown by the name of Big Cheese.

As Big Cheese puts it, “Gimme dat bacon!”  Can’t argue with such succinct logic.

(via)

It’s no secret that bacon is one of the most gorgeous foods on the planet. Certainly, it tastes as good as it looks…but when something is so beautiful, shouldn’t it also be displayed so that it can be marveled at?

As it turns out, we’re not the only ones who think this way.  Now through November 17th, the Mew Gallery in Philadelphia is featuring an exhibition by local artist Mike Geno called “The Bacon Show”, featuring crispy and savory works by Ellen Cagnassola, Cho, Jacob Crose, Ken B. Miller, SappyMoose Tree, John Wolfer, and Mike Geno himself.  (If you recognize the name Ellen Cagnassola, it might be because she’s been gaining notoriety lately as the owner of SweetSoaps, maker of a very delicious-sounding “bacon soap”.  We’ve got some of it on hand, and we’ll be posting a review of it soon.)

If you can’t make it to Philly within the next several days to see this exhibit, head over to Meat Artists to see more of what’s on display.

Yes, you read that title correctly.

Vera Lewis of Redondo Beach, California, has smashed through countless frontiers of deliciousness and gluttony to come up with the most fantastic bacon dish we’ve heard of in quite some time.  As the following video shows, it’s really easy to make.

In honor of his birthday, Randy Lewis gets to be the first one to try the final product.

From the sounds of Randy’s reaction, this creation turned out so well it makes you wonder why it hasn’t been done before. It’s also further proof that bacon is indeed a spectacular dessert ingredient, as it makes for a phenomenal fusion of salty and sweet.

So what’s next? What new dessert would you like to see with bacon in it?

You love bacon, and you probably like to loosen up with a drink after the workweek has ended. Loyal baconist Kelly Matthews tipped us off about one phenomenal way to do both at once.

Introducing the Wild Turbacon Sandwich:  A sandwich with 100 strips of bacon, and a bottle of Wild Turkey to wash it all down.

“Okay, that looks like a reasonable lunch or dinner option,” you say.  ”But what about something a little sweeter for Sunday brunch?”

Glad you asked.  Here’s the Wild Turbacon Roll:  100 slices of bacon between eight cinnamon rolls, and yes, a bottle of Wild Turkey as a chaser.

(via Flickr)