I’ve been meaning to try these cookies since I came across the recipe on my favorite baking blog, Joy the Baker, last year. I mentioned to one of my care package recipients that Peanut Butter Bacon cookies were in the pipeline, so I figured it needed to happen sooner than later.
However when I went to make them last weekend, I noticed the recipe I’d printed out from the internet did not include butter OR flour…that could not be right, could it? Divorced from the blog post that went with it, I had no way to know that indeed, this was a flourless cookie recipe. Not wanting to waste 5 beautiful slices of bacon, and not sure if a cookie could even be made without butter and flour, I went with my go-to peanut butter cookie recipe, tweaked the fat a little bit to accommodate the bacon and a little extra bacon fat, and forged ahead.
I don’t know if it just needed more bacon, or if the bacon is supposed to be very subtle, but I would not have been able to recognize them as having bacon. It just added a really nice extra dimension to the peanut butter flavor. A little smoke, a little extra salt. Very nice. I was not crazy about the chunks of bacon, not the right texture to bite into when eating a PB cookie. So I would recommend a thinner slice of bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled well. Avoid the thick cut.
I also had some Bourbon Smoked Sugar from the Spice Tin http://www.thespicetin.com/ that I sprinkled on top of the cookies. I did not really get a smoky taste, not sure what the taste was. But probably not worth the extra $. Though it did sound impressive, and did not taste bad. They would probably taste pretty good with some milk chocolate chips. Next time I will try the flourless recipe, and see how that goes.
Feedback from Jo Pumpkins of the Sugar Mamma Cookie Tasting Panel of Experts: “The peanut butter cookie was off the rockers.”
Peanut Butter Bacon cookies with Bourbon Smoked Sugar
Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies
Adapted from Betty Crocker and Joy the Baker
Yield: 30 cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup brown sugar, packed
- ½ cup peanut butter
- ¼ cup shortening
- 1 egg
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 5 slices of bacon, fried crisp and crumbled or finely chopped
Directions
- In a skillet over medium high heat, fry up bacon until cooked through and let cool on paper towels until cool enough to crumble or chop. Finely chop or crumble and set aside.
- Reserve about a tablespoon or two of the bacon grease and let it cool.
- With a hand mixer or stand mixer, Mix sugars, peanut butter, shortening, cooled bacon grease.
- Add egg and mix thoroughly
- Stir in remaining dry ingredients until just incorporated
- Fold in bacon
- If dough seems too soft to roll into balls, Cover and refrigerate about 2 hours or until firm. My dough seemed dry enough that it did not need to be chilled.
- Heat oven to 375ºF.
- Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls.
- Place about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten in crisscross pattern with fork dipped into sugar, then sprinkle with more sugar. Or just roll the whole thing in sugar, before flattening with a fork.
- Bake 9 to 10 minutes or until light golden brown.
- Cool 5 minutes; remove from cookie sheet.
- Cool on a wire rack.
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