Now, I've had chocolate with many things: cheeses, chili, lime, ginger, all sorts of liquor and so on. When trying to come up with a pairing for this challenge, I realized I'd never had chocolate and bacon together. I know it's a combo that's pretty popular, but we never have REAL bacon in our house. We like to pretend that turkey bacon tastes just like regular bacon because turkey bacon is not as evil as pork bacon. Or something. The first thing I had to do was purchase REAL bacon. Mmmmmmmmbacon.
I knew it was a cupcake that had been done before, but I'd never done it...so to get the bacon flavor going right from the start, I replaced the oil in my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe with bacon grease. Sounds kinda gross, eh? Perhaps, but wow...that smoky bacon flavor really pops with the cocoa. When I baked the cupcakes, I did everything I normally did...but I guess the change in the "oil" altered the balance just enough that the cupcakes domed over onto the pan. I hate when that happens!
While the cupcakes were cooling, I prepared the frosting - Pure Maple Buttercream. I could eat this frosting by the spoonful if I didn't feel so guilty about doing so...my son on the other hand, doesn't share my guilt. He's currently running around the house pretending he's The Flash whilst on a sugar high.
Atop the frosting I placed a piece of chocolate covered bacon, hand dipped by yours truly. And sugar sprinkles...I love sugar sprinkles. If you combined bacon and French toast and then covered them in chocolate...yea, that's my cupcake.
A month ago when I started asking my son what he wanted for his 4th birthday, he would reply with the same answer every time:
"I want to have a party at Chuck E. Cheeses and play games and have a strawberry cake."
Sounded simple enough, right? Well, his older sister is very much allergic to strawberries and I didn't want to make multiple cakes - cupcakes were definitely the way to go.
I have this very versitile cupcake recipe that I use for almost everything, and just alter certain ingredients as I go along. Someone once told me that baking is an exact science, you can't just wing it. Well, everytime I wing it, I have a new favorite cupcake!
I made a white cocoa cupcake and filled it with a mixture of strawberry Squeezie Fruit (ever try the stuff? It's amazing!) and white cocoa buttercream. Then I topped the cupcakes with more white cocoa buttercream. My son loves gummy treats - gummy bears, gummy worms, all of the above. So I took some Wonka squishy Sploshberries and placed them on top of the buttercream. After adding a little red sugar crystals, I was done!
Of course, I set some unfilled cupcakes aside for my daughter so she wouldn't have to endure the hives that strawberies give her.
The cupcakes were a hit at his party. Our party hostess even requested one! I'm glad I brought some to-go bakery boxes too, because some other parents wanted to take cupcakes home to their families.
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