It turned out that three minutes and twenty seconds was just the right amount of time to produce crispy roulades of bacon. What you see above is two pieces of thick-cut bacon, snipped in half to produce four spirals.
The initial coating process, with maple syrup and butter, made me want to eat the bacon pieces even before they'd been coated in chocolate. Once I had coated the bacon pieces, I placed them in the freezer for a few minutes to re-harden the chocolate, which was just standard, semi-sweet chocolate chips.
In terms of mouth feel, these were legitimate truffles, but the bacon lost some of its crispiness in the maple/butter soaking process. Next time around, I'm going to spoon the solution into the middle of the bacon so that the outside will remain crispier. I also think I need to spruce up the chocolate itself, perhaps by adding some Lindor truffles to the mix to produce a tastier coating.
Still-- not a bad first effort. Such truffles are easy to make, as it turns out; they simply take a bit of time due to the cool-down, the drainage, the soaking and re-drainage, and the few minutes of post-coating freezer time.
Righto-- mad prep in progress. Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!
_
When you perfect this, you WILL send me the recipe.
ReplyDeleteAwesome. They look so good!
ReplyDeleteAnd I think the word verification gods have come up with a name for these: "grotoles"
No idea what that's supposed to mean, but it sounds like a food name.
Oh, just thought of something: would it be possible to coat the bacon with the butter/maple syrup before nuking? That might help guarantee crispiness... although it may not be exactly what you're going for.
ReplyDeleteCharles,
ReplyDeleteI had the same thought & might try that. I also thought about some sort of marination. How does one make maple bacon, after all?
Steve,
Will do.
You... are a sweet genius. I, on the other hand, am a lazy bastard, preferring to buy a Vosges Mo's Bacon Bar when I want the sweet, sweet taste of chocolate combined with the savory, salty tang of applewood smoked bacon.
ReplyDeleteElisson,
ReplyDeleteI may have to buy a bar just to see what the Platonic ideal of ChocoPig is, then base my own efforts on that.
See, and for Thanksgiving, one of the things I took along to the husband's relative's home was a spin on an Indian milk sweet (called peda), but I MacGuyver'd it w/pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice, to render a lovely pumpkin pie fudge type bite... all the loveliness of a pumpkin pie sans crust and totally portable.
ReplyDeleteNow you've got me thinking of MacGuyvering a batch w/chocolate and entirely TOO much crispy, smokey, luscious bacon.
I do have your current mailing addy, don't I? :) I need to be able to unload what I make, as I don't trust myself with a full batch in the house:)
PS: The milk sweet = all of 10 minutes actual cook time in the micro. It's about as perfect as perfect gets:)
As always, I'm in awe of your culinary experiments.
ReplyDeleteNiceties aside, my purpose for commenting is just to ask an inane, immature question. Have you noticed that one of your chocolate bacon truffles in the final picture, the finished product picture, has a vagina?
Holden,
ReplyDeleteJust to make sure we're both on the same page regarding what a vagina looks like: you're referring to the upper-left morsel, which appears to have some labia?