Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies

We have a friend.  Let's call her Gem.

Gem is that friend who can wear any outfit and make it look good...and she's not even Asian!  Gem is that friend who has got her act so together that she pulls off the junior high school play every year with gusto. And Gem is that friend that introduced me to bacon. Bacon and chocolate.

She's cutting edge, I'm just saying.

She offered me a piece of Vosges Mo's Bacon Bar years ago. She didn't tell me what it was.

I was expecting grasshoppers or banana slugs or something.  But it wasn't.

It was bacon.  Salty bacon set in a dark chocolate.  It was strangely good and I was in love with that salty sweet combination.

So I jumped on the bacon band wagon, taking Lee with me, and we haven't gotten off.

We made bacon truffle chocolates one year for Christmas.

We try stuff with bacon on it.

And we recently made these Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies.

One of my favorite food bloggers, Joy the Baker, recently came out with her first cookbook, Joy the Baker Cookbook: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes, and this recipe was in it.

The new Joy the Baker cookbook!

I looked at the ingredients and I couldn't find a trace of flour anywhere; I was sure it was a typo. It happens, right?

So I tweeted Joy.  And she tweeted back!  Excitement!

She confirmed that, indeed, there is not a single gram of flour in this recipe.  Oh dear.  I was a little concerned.  I just couldn't imagine it working.

But I gave it a go anyway!

Here are your basic ingredients--not too many.

Just a handful of ingredients are needed

Don't forget the bacon!  I had gotten a hickory-smoked bacon variety. Mmm...

Nice crispy bacon baked in the oven

The dough is fast and easy to throw together. You will see that your dough is sticky and crumbly at the same time.  Sticky, because you're dealing with sticky ingredients and no flour.  Crumbly, because of the bacon and peanuts.  You'll then be dipping the balls into sugar and flattening them down with a fork into the traditional crisscross pattern, then baking them.

And what you get is a lovely cookie.  Crispy on the edges, soft at its core, and very crumbly.  That's my favorite part, how crumbly it is. It's like the cookie has gotten caramelized because of the sugar and no flour.  You can break off a small piece of cookie and all of it's crispy--my fave!

Look at the bacon...and the nuts!

And the molasses--it brought out the richness of the bacon and the peanut butter.

Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies

I want to try changing up the bacon to maybe a maple bacon next time. Maybe the maple flavor and molasses will work.  Maybe not.  We'll see!

Anyway, I highly recommend you jump on the bacon bandwagon too and give these a try--see if people can guess the secret ingredient! 


Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies
from Joy the Baker: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes

Ingredients:

8 slices of bacon

1 c all-natural peanut butter

1/2 c granulated sugar

2 tsp molasses

1 large egg

1 tsp baking soda

Generous pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 c coarsely chopped roasted, salted peanuts

Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.  Line a sided baking sheet with foil and place bacon slices in a single layer. Bake bacon until crispy, about 15 to 17 minutes. Remove from the oven (leaving it on), let cool slightly, then transfer to paper towels to cool completely. When cool enough to handle, coarsely chop the bacon and set aside.

Line a clean cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar, and the molasses until thoroughly combined, about 3 minutes.  Add the egg, baking soda, and nutmeg, and mix on medium speed for another 2 minutes.

Remove the paddle attachment and the bowl and use a wooden spoon to fold in the bacon and peanuts. Roll the dough into large walnut-sized balls and roll in the remaining 1/2 cup granulated sugar. Place on lined cookie sheet, and use a fork to make that distinctive peanut butter cookie crisscross pattern.  If the cookie dough begins to stick to the fork, dip it in sugar before pressing into cookie.  Dough will be crumbly--I just reshaped them as needed.

Bake for 10 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies will be really crumbly and delicious! Cookies will last up to 5 days in an airtight container in the refrigerator.