Bacon Apple Pie is Better Than Apple Pie
Bacon might be the most beloved food in the world. It's rich, smoky, crispy, and satisfying. What most don't realize is that it's also a great ingredient for many desserts, adding an enjoyable textural contrast and balancing sweetness. Before you start including bacon in all your dessert recipes, here are 10 ways to work bacon into dessert and 10 that won't work.
1. Bacon Maple Cupcakes
Make your cupcakes saltier and smokier by adding bacon, and then complement the flavor with maple syrup to deepen the sweetness. This creates a more balanced and pleasing cupcake that won't just have one note of flavor. The soft cake and the crispy bacon make for an interesting contrast.
2. Candied Bacon Chocolate Bark
The fun of chocolate bark is that it's a blank slate for your favorite flavors. Sprinkle some brown sugar on the bacon and then bake it until it's caramelized and crunchy. Chop it up and mix it into melted milk or dark chocolate to make your bark.
3. Bacon Caramel Sauce
Introducing finally chopped crispy bacon to a caramel sauce creates a smoky, bold depth of flavor. The salty notes balance the caramel's sweetness and elevate any scoop of ice cream or brownie.
4. Bacon Apple Pie
Apple pie and bacon are a match made in heaven. Bacon is the perfect twist to traditional, nostalgic apple pie. Mix crispy chopped bacon into the apple filling, and then crumble some over the top just before you slide it into the oven.
5. Bacon Peanut Brittle
You can enhance the sweet and salty crunch of peanut brittle by adding small pieces of crispy bacon into the roasted peanuts. The bacon's smokiness enhances the brittle's flavor, making it more appealing to people without a sweet tooth.
6. Bacon Bourbon Brownies
Chocolate brownies complement bacon and bourbon nicely. The bacon supplies a savory crunch while the bourbon adds more depth of flavor to the chocolate. Bacon ensures that the caramel notes in the batter feel even more indulgent and complex.
7. Bacon Banana Bread
Banana bread is classic, but adding a twist can make it even better. Fold crispy bacon into the batter, and its flavor will play off the natural sweetness and moisture of the bananas. The final product is salty, sweet, crunchy, and with a hint of smokiness.
8. Bacon S'mores
You might think s'mores are perfect as they are, but bacon is the one ingredient that can improve anything. The mix of smoky bacon with toasted marshmallows balances the sweetness by enhancing the savoriness.
9. Bacon Donuts
It didn't take long for maple bacon donuts to become iconic. Maple and bacon are the perfect flavor combination, hitting every sweet and savory note in a bite. Plus, the donut's fluffiness pairs perfectly with crisp bacon.
10. Bacon Ice Cream
To make bacon ice cream, you should first candy the bacon and then blend it into the creamy base. The cold temperature softens the bacon's smokiness, making sure it doesn't overpower the other flavors.
1. Bacon Cotton Candy
The best version of cotton candy relies on airy sweetness and a unique texture. Bacon is too dense, oily, and overpowering to blend with it in a natural way. Even bacon flavoring doesn't blend with sugar fluff, so skip it.
2. Bacon Macarons
Making a batch of macarons requires precision and subtlety, which are not bacon's calling cards. Bacon bits can compromise the shell's texture and result in uneven baking.
3. Bacon Meringue Cookies
Meringue needs to be airy and clean, so introducing bacon fat into the mix can deflate the egg white component. It's not even a good idea to add bacon after the meringue is made, as the flavors will clash.
4. Bacon Jell-O
Gelatin desserts need three things: brightness, clean flavors, and a uniform texture. Bacon would disrupt all three and create a chewiness that would be off-putting.
5. Bacon Marshmallows
Bacon bits inside a marshmallow could make them soggy and destroy their texture. The moisture inside a marshmallow would soften bacon, making it rubbery.
6. Bacon Cheesecake
Bacon in cheesecake won't work out. Cheesecake's creamy richness makes the saltiness in bacon more pronounced, creating a greasy flavor that's unappealing. Bacon will also lose its crispiness inside the dense filling.
7. Bacon Pudding
The smooth, silky texture of pudding is not a good fit for crispy, chewy bacon. Bacon will wreck the pudding's smoothness and introduce a greasy film that will overpower the other flavors.
8. Bacon Sorbet
Sorbet is a bright and refreshing dessert, but bacon's heaviness will undermine those aspects. This combination will produce an oily texture that will be unbalanced and taste like a disjointed group of flavors that can't blend. Bacon can make the sorbet mixture flat and boring, and destroy the texture and flavour in the process. Also, cold bacon isn't all that appealing.
9. Bacon Fruitcake
Fruitcake is a controversial holiday dessert that can't be made better with bacon. Fruitcake's flavors are too strong to blend smoothly with bacon. The bacon will turn rubbery during the baking process, and its saltiness clashes with the intense sweetness of the candied fruit.
10. Bacon Crème Brûlée
Crème brûlée works because of its delicate contrast. Bacon is not a strong fit for the silky custard and caramelized sugar, which are integral to crème brûlée. It would compete with the sugar crust, ruining the entire purpose and joy of this dessert. Furthermore, the bacon's natural smokiness wouldn't enhance the vanilla custard, making the dessert a muddled mess.
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