Salty Candied Bacon Walnut Chocolate Truffles - My Weekend of Truffles

Given its my weekend of truffles I decided to keep going and make some more.    Diet to start next week!!!!!

I wanted something salty sweet and given the success of my salty bacon cracker cookies I wanted to keep on going down the bacon and salt path.

I decided that I wanted to candy my bacon in brown sugar.  If you have never candied bacon you are missing out.  This is a delicious and fun palette pleaser.

I chopped up a mixture of 2/3 walnuts, 1/3 almonds.   I mixed melted milk chocolate with the chopped nuts, and candied bacon chopped finely.  I rolled the ganache in that and formed a little ball.   Coated it with extra chopped nuts.   Topped it with some pieces of candied bacon and gave it a nice sprinkle of salt.

What I got was SO yum.   Highly reccomend!

Weekend Chocolate Truffles

What is a great way to spend my saturday you ask?   Making some home made chocolate truffles.   I tried this once before and the results were ok but I made them too bitter.   I learned my lesson so this time a put in a bit more cream, some vanilla and corn syrup.    They turned out amazing.  YUM

Tossed some of them in walnuts that I had chopped up and the others I tossed in cocoa powder and powered sugar.   YUM YUM YUM

So easy to make!

What to do when you are blue??? CUPCAKES!!! - A Recipe For A Hard Weekend

So the last few days have been a tough couple of days.    I have been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster due to a very close family member going through major surgery to try to make a dent in their stage 4 cancer.  To add to my tiredness and stress I had to work from 9-9 the previous weekend and then red-eye it home to begin helping my family prep for the surgery.   I have been basically going since 2/28 and last night was my first night off.   I had been suffering from migranes since friday due to exhaustion and stress and they were finally getting under control so I wanted to do something to celebrate my night off.

What to do...what to do...

Oh wait I know!  I will make that which has the power to make almost everyone smile :)

CUPCAKES!

So what were the attributes I wanted in my cupcake:

Heavenly Light and Fluffy
Flavorful and Robust Icing without the Fluff Factor

Fundamentally I wanted comfort food not decorative desert.  I looked up a quick recipe from Epicurious for white cupcakes as white cupcakes are light, fluffy and, pillowy cupcake heaven.  For some reason they remind me of being 6 years old and having my hand covered in icing.  haha.  I digress...

Here is a pic of the white cupcakes out of the oven cooling off:

For the icing I wanted to once again make something very comforting.    I thought about comforting and chocolate is about as comforting as it gets.   I mean for reals...they make your body release natural opiates.    That sounds comforting!

One of my favorite simple chocolate icing recipes is the one on the box of Hershey's brand unsweetened cocoa powder.   I mean it is hershey's...Once again I am six years old with my hand in the icing bowl! hehe :) xoxo

So I used the HERSHEY'S "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting Recipe which is on the side of the cocoa box but also online.   I make one modification to the recipe though....  I cut out some sugar because I want the cocoa to be the star.   So my recipe has the following in it for ingredients:

1 stick of butter (mmmm)
2/3 cup of Hershey's Unsweetend Cocoa
2 cups of powdered sugar (recipe says 3 cups)
1/3 cup of WHOLE milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Now Hershey's recipe for "Perfectly Chocolate" frosting calls for 3 cups of sugar but I use 2 cups.   Why you ask?    I want COCOA to be the star NOT sugar.    With 2 cups it is sweet but also nice and choco-licious.  It retains a bitter of bitterness which is what makes chocolate great.

I let someone try my icing and they responded with the following statement:

"My oh my.  I just want to jump head first into that bowl"

hehe xoxo

Ok now given I am usually an ingredient nut I want to address the Hershey's Cocoa component of this recipe.  Some of you might be saying it's not gourmet, it's not organic, it's not this and it's not that.   Well guess what it's perfect.   Read the ingredients....There are only one.  Cocoa.   GO Hershey's the iconic american chocolate brand.  Oh how I love thee Hershey's.  Your taste, your flavor, your super exciting theme park....ALL OF IT.  ICONIC. xoxo

xoxo

So how did it turn out?????????

PURE COMFORT FOOD DELICIOUSNESS!

YUM YUM FLUFFY CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES!

Salty Bacon Chocolate Cracker Cookie - My Oscar Night Party Treats

My little sister Kat worked on True Grit so naturally we went to her house for an Oscar party.   She packed like 20+ people into her studio and the party was...how do you say....super (!*@# fun. 

She told me "just bring wine..."

Yeah right.   I mean...I am a foodie...I can't roll to a party without bringing some goodies.   I also didn't want to out do what she had planned so I decided to bring something that was simple, tasty, and of course made you really want to eat it.



So I racked my brain and an idea came out of it.   When we were at my families house in St Louis, MO we ate these chocolate cracker treats that were simple and delicious.   So I looked up the recipe and found it on cooks..com


Cooks.com Chocolate Top Saltines

1 stick butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. sugar
Saltine crackers
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Line 13 x 9 inch pan with foil and then saltines. Melt butter, sugar and vanilla in a small pan. Pour over saltines and bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes. Remove from oven. Cover with chocolate chips. Let chips melt and spread evenly with back of spoon. Sprinkle with walnuts. Chill. Remove foil and break cookies into pieces.

Now this was delicious but REALLY REALLY SWEET.   I love sweetness but I wanted to do something to balance it a bit...

How recently I ate at Flour and Water in San Francisco.  While there I had their dessert that was like chocolate mousse with sea salt on top.  The salty sweet combo was OFF THE HOOK.

Ok idea.

Lets bring a level of saltiness to this dish to punch it up.     So where can I find salty that isnt as obvious as salt???????

B
A
C
O
N
BACON!!!!!

So the new plan was to up the amount of butter in this recipe to add 2 more tablespoons and a bit more sugar to make it richer.   Then when sprinkling on the the chopped walnuts add some crispy salty bacon with sea salt.   If I punch it up with salty bacon and make it more buttery to tie it up with a butter bow (salt in butter should be the evener on the salty flavor) then this will be AMAZING.

And what happened....

PURE DELICIOUSNESS

I mean absurd.   Choco-bacony YUM YUM YUM

Here are the pics:

 

 

 

YUM YUM CHOCOLATE BACON!!!!!!