{Recipe} Bacon & Chocolate Chip Cookies

My new love affair. Salty, chocolatey, sweet, savory. It's all right here in one perfect little package. You brown the butter to add a rich nutty flavor and then the bacon takes it over the top. Yum!

Brown Butter, Bacon & Chocolate Chip Cookies
(from Mouth From the South)

1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon table salt
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
4 oz semisweet chocolate bar, diced into 1/4" pieces
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chops (I like Ghirardelli 60% cacao)
3 tablespoons milk chocolate, grated
1 cup bacon that's been fried until crispy and diced into roughly 1/4" pieces

Adjust your oven rack so it's in the middle position. Pre-heat to 375 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Whisk flour and baking soda together in a medium bowl and set aside.

Heat 10 tablespoons of butter in a 10 inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly. Watch this carefully - butter can go from brown to burned very quickly. When butter is dark-golden brown and has a nutty aroma, remove from heat and immediately transfer to a heatproof bowl. Stir the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter into hot butter until melted.

Add granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, salt and vanilla to bowl with butter and whisk until completely mixed. Add egg and egg yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth and there are no lumps of sugar remaining.

Let sugar/egg/butter mixture stand for a few minutes. Then whisk again for 30 seconds. Do this several times - you want to make sure that the sugar has "melted" into the liquid. When ready, mixture will be smooth, thick and shiny.

Using wooden spoon, stir in the flour mixture until just combined. Stir in grated chocolate, chocolate chunks, chocolate chips and bacon pieces. Don't overmix but make sure no flour pockets remain.

Using a teaspoon, place a heaping teaspoon of cookie dough on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I get about 14 on a baking sheet. Bake for 10-14 minutes (my oven takes 11 minutes) until cookies are golden-brown and set along the edges but the middle is still soft. Remove from oven and set baking sheet on a wire rack and let cool for at least 10 minutes.

Our Thanksgiving Desserts!

By popular demand, here's the desserts from our Thanksgiving Feast. The best part of the meal in my opinion! Our original goal was one per person, but in reality seven desserts filled us to the brim.

Quick, easy and summer fresh {dessert recipe}

Fruit Stacks with Drizzling Sauce
Makes 2

Ingredients:
3 ripe nectarines, thinly sliced (about a cup)
1 pint fresh raspberries
1 sheet puff pastry dough (I use Pepperidge Farm from the grocery freezer case)
3 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp milk

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400˚F. Allow puff pastry dough to come to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Cut dough in thirds along fold lines forming long strips, cut each strip in half. You now have six sections of dough. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and position two sections of dough about four inches apart, these will be the base pieces for the desserts. Layer nectarines neatly on each piece. Cover nectarines with a piece of dough. Layer raspberries gently pressing them into the dough so they don't roll away. Cover raspberries with the last two pieces of dough. Add a raspberry to the top for garnish. Place fruit stacks in the oven for about 25 minutes or until the dough is crisp and golden.

To make the drizzling sauce combine powdered sugar and milk and whisk until combined. Serve fruit stacks warm and drizzled with sugar sauce. Yum!

How do I describe these?

Delicious, decadent, desirable, definitely not enough to share, breakfast, lunch and dinner, dreamy. Hello, cupcakes. I love you.

I made this batch of cupcakes and I'm going to make them again and again. They are easy and fabulous. The shiny ganache is rich and beautiful, the cake is moist and light.

The cupcake recipe is adapted from the Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor, a fun book my mom gave me a few years ago. I made the Chocolate Midnight Cake. Rather than making a layer cake, I made cupcakes. This recipe made about 18 cupcakes.

1 package plain dark chocolate fudge cake mix
1 cup water
1 cup mayonnaise
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Place the cake mix, water, mayonnaise, eggs and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping down the sides again if needed. The batter should look well combined. Divide batter evenly filling cupcake papers about 3/4 full.

3. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

The ganache recipe is from Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Ratio gives you the skeleton of multitudes of recipe basics. Ganache is simply 1 part cream to 1 part chocolate. The real secret behind a fabulous ganache is the chocolate you use. It has to be good, good enough to eat alone, good enough to crave.

8 ounces heavy cream
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped.

1. In a medium sauce pan, bring the cream just to a simmer

2. Place chopped chocolate in a heat safe bowl, pour cream over the chocolate. Wait 5 minutes for the chocolate to soften.

3. Whisk the cream and chocolate until they are completely combined.

4. Allow to cool slightly then pour over cupcakes. Delightful!

Gonna eat a lot of peaches

Because of the recent peach explosion around here, I've been hunting out every peach centered recipe I can find. So far, I've come across Bellini Pops from Fine Cooking. These are peach popsicles with Prosecco, Italian champagne. Yum. I'm making these now and between the recipe and me I've nearly finished the bottle of Prosecco. Oopsie!

I found these five recipes for Peach Salsa. Yum. I'll be making some of those when my tomato plants start producing red ripe fruit. I found Raspberry-Peach Chicken and Chicken with Peach Stuffing. Yum and yum. Then there's Peach Pie with Brie adorably tucked into cupcake foils. Yum.

And now I'm STARVING. Do you have any peachy favorites?