Speckkuchen

Speckkuchen is a New Year's tradition for my husband's family. This recipe is adapted from my mother-in-law's recipe. My mother-in-law is an awesome cook and does wonders with yeast doughs. I, on the other hand am yeast challenged. I've never successfully made a dough that required yeast. So while her original recipe calls for making a bread dough, I've created a short cut (after many years of trying many things) by buying Rhodes frozen dinner rolls.

Speckkuchen (roughly translated into Bacon cake cake bacon cake)

1 package (36 rolls) of Rhodes frozen dinner rolls

36oz of bacon

2 medium onions

1 egg, beaten

1. Place rolls on baking sheet and allow to thaw and rise a little.

2. Cut up the bacon into about 1 inch pieces and chop the onion.

3. Cook bacon and onion together until bacon is done, but not crispy (although you can go crispy if you want, it's just a different texture. My daughter actually likes it better crispy).

4. Flatten thawed dough into a disk shape and put about 1 TBSP filling in the center. I used the Pampered Chef small scoop to measure the filling.

4. Form into half circle shapes and seal with a fork.

5. Brush with beaten egg.

6. Bake in 350F oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

The final product will vary in appearance as some will open up and some will stay closed, but they'll all taste baconlicious! We also almost always have leftover bacon and onion mixture. Use it in an omelet for a yummy New Year's Day breakfast!

Bacon Bourbon Popcorn

Now how can one go wrong with popcorn? In my research to find recipes to try for this blog, I found this one and HAD to try it! Even my popcorn purist hubby agreed.

The recipe: Bacon Bourbon Popcorn

It's also awesome because she has a video showing the process! Extremely helpful for me as I'm a visual learner. :o)

The helpful tips, modifications and learn-from-my-mistakes section:

* The recipe called for air popped or oil popped popcorn. I happen to live with an expert oil popper and therefore hubby was enlisted as assistant and popcorn popper.

* After extensive mathematical research, 5 quarts of popped popcorn equals roughly 1 1/4 cups unpopped popcorn.

* We found it easier to fry the bacon, then crumble as opposed to chopped and then fried.

* I don't know that it makes much difference, but I used dark brown sugar as that was all I had in my house.

* We used 1 lb of bacon.

* Have all ingredients measured and ready to go. I didn't and when your bacon isn't already cooked and chopped, your butter is turning brown, but you don't have the corn syrup and brown sugar ready to go, you're going to make it tougher on yourself than it needs to be and probably end up with a mess as shown below.

* Instead of putting the popcorn in the pans and pouring the caramel mixture over then stirring, we used large mixing bowls to mix popcorn and caramel mixture together first and then put in prepared pans.

* We ended up needing (1) 9x13 pan, (1) 2qt casserole dish and (1) 8x8 pan to hold all our popcorn.

* The assistant, AKA Hubby, recommends that he should also know the recipe completely to prevent the head baker from making mistakes such as, oh, I don't know, not adding the bacon at the right time (don't worry, we did, barely, but we made it!) But I kept asking him questions and he kept responding with, "Didn't you read the recipe?" The answer of course was yes, several times, but in the heat of the cooking, it's easy to forget. Best to have more than one person know what they're doing. :o)

* The assistant also recommends that a shot of bourbon prior to even starting the recipe would help.

All's well that ends well and the final product is total yum with a dash of yummy thrown in for good measure!

Boozy Brownies

This one was fun! Right away I started with a modification. The Boozy Brownie recipe called for a box brownie mix or your favorite brownie recipe. I opted for the favorite brownie recipe so in this post you're getting 2 recipes!

First you need to make the brownies: Double Deluxe All American Brownies

Yep, you guessed it, I've modified it. Here's my changes to this tasty recipe:
1) I use whole wheat flour instead of white flour.
2) Instead of 1 1/2c semi-sweet chocolate chips, I pour a whole bag of Hershey's Dark Chocolate chips in.
3) I omit the nuts.

*P.S. As a side note, this recipe also makes a yummy habanero brownie that is promptly eaten every time I make it. Just substitute habanero sauce for the vanilla. But that substitution is not in this recipe so now I've made it 3 recipes in one blog! :o)

The Boozy Part: Boozy Brownies
Now that we've made our favorite brownie recipe, it's time to move on to adding the alcohol.

Modifications:
1) I didn't measure the Bourbon. I poured 2 small bottles (the tiny ones that are like $1.75 or so...airplane bottles) of Jim Beam Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey over my brownies.
2) Not really a modification, but I used Kraken Black Spiced Rum (my personal favorite) in the butter cream frosting.
3) For the chocolate topping I used 2 TBSP butter instead of shortening and used 1 cup of dark chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet. This did not lend itself to drizzling and so ended up being more of another frosting, basically turning my rum butter cream frosting into my chocolate rum butter cream frosting, but no one cared. :o)

Final product: YUMMY! It's extremely sweet, but oh so tasty!

Beginning of the Booze and Bacon culinary adventure!

I love bacon! My love of bacon is well known and I'm always on the lookout for unique recipes with bacon as an ingredient. I'm also intrigued with the idea of cooking and baking with alcohol. Since I needed an excuse to make these experimental recipes, I decided to start a blog to write about my experiences in the booze and bacon culinary world.

A little about me. First, I'm trying to lose weight. I know, why would someone trying to lose weight be baking and cooking with booze and bacon? There is no logical answer to that, but it does mean that the adventure may be a slow one as obviously to maintain my girlish figure (or try to recapture it) I can't be eating rich food all of the time. But nothing says I can't make it and give it away either. However often this is updated, I hope you find it fun!

Second, I'm a recipe modifier. Basically, I don't stay within the lines very well. I'm a rebel at heart. Although I am a cautious rebel and will usually follow a recipe to the letter...the 1st time. After that, all bets are off. :o) I will post the link to the recipe I'm trying and I'll also post how I modified it to appease my rebellious nature.

I would love ideas for recipes to try. The only rule is it must contain alcohol or bacon (or both) as an ingredient! So bring on those recipes!