Bacon chocolate

On Friday, I bought a bacon chocolate bar. I was pretty excited about it; but it turned out to be somewhat disappointing. First, and most damningly, it wasn't very bacon-y. Despite a very large and prominent picture of a slice of bacon on the bar, the bacon flavor was incredibly subtle. It was more a salty chocolate bar than a bacon-y chocolate bar. And it was milk chocolate--only 45% cocoa. Dark chocolate would have served the concept much better.

So I decided to make my own, the way I wanted it. I took some very dark chocolate (Lindt's 85% cocoa, although you could also substitute two bars of unsweetened baking chocolate with 1/2 - 1 bar of semi-sweet) and melted it in a double boiler. While that was melting, I chopped some smoked bacon and cooked it until it was very crispy and let it cool. When the chocolate was melted, I spread it on a cookie sheet that had been covered in parchment paper, and sprinkled all the many bacon pieces over it. I pressed those in with my rubber spatula, and then added a lot of applewood-smoked salt. I let it sit for a few hours, then broke it apart and ate it.

Wow. REALLY good. I could have put even more bacon and salt in there, but the final product made me much, much happier than the store-bought bar.

Bacon makes everything better.