Bacon Cookies

I love decorating cookies (obviously). But, sometimes the thought of making dough, rolling it out, using cutters, baking cookies, cooling cookies, making royal icing, dying the icing, preparing the bags, and finally decorating the cookies exhausts me. I wonder why? So, I love making cookies that look awesome and don’t require icing or pastry bags. I found a fabulous tutorial on bacon cookies, though I wanted to add a NoYoMoCo spin. Bacon isn’t bacon without that wavy shape…but how to achieve it? Luckily, Sugarbelle, the cookie queen, used a technique to make fun tortilla chip cookies. So, I combined these techniques, threw in some sugar “pepper,” and voila – it’s bacon! (I may use this phrase several times throughout this blog post…sorry). 

Ingredients:

• Your favorite sugar cookies recipe (for cutout cookies)
• Various food coloring (I used Wilton’s golden yellow, Americolor pink, Americolor chocolate brown, Americolor super red – I think that is it!)
• Brown sugar
• Black sugar (I dyed my own)
• Meringue powder
• A small paintbrush
• Wooden dowels to fit your cookie sheet (I used 5/8 of an inch, but going a bit smaller may be better)
• A cookie sheet with rimmed edges
• Parchment paper (you will definitely need it for this)

1. Convince a handy loved one to buy wooden dowels and cut them to fit your cookie sheet. Debate the proper size on the telephone while you’re sitting around at home “cleaning” and they are in Home Depot. Wait impatiently as they use the big, scary saw. Love them unconditionally.

I didn’t get a picture of the dowels themselves, but you’ll see what I mean in a minute.

2. Divide your dough into 3 balls – two of equal size and one a bit smaller.

Dye the smaller dough ball a dark red/pink/brown (I used red, pink, and brown coloring – imagine that?). Dye one of the larger dough balls a beige/yellow color ( I used yellow and brown coloring) and dye the other large dough ball a pinky red, close to the color of ground beef (I used pink, red, and some brown coloring). Put the dough in the fridge for a bit (30 minutes or so).

I wanted to make these cookies slice and bake, like the original tutorial, so once your dough is nice and cold, start building your block of dough. Since we want to cut these cookies, you want the side view to look like a slice of bacon. Here, I’ll show you.

3. Take the dark red dough, place it on some plastic wrap, and make some funky shapes with it.

As you can see, this is not rocket science! But, from my reference pictures, the darkest meat of the bacon is usually concentrated on one side. So, that is what I did. Don’t worry about perfection – it’s bacon!

Then, I started adding in some of the beige dough and the pink dough in the random grooves:

It is harder to see the cross-section view since some of my dough hangs over, but you get the idea. I ended with the beige color, then covered it in plastic wrap and let it chill in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.

Don’t worry about the top being even. The dips and variations will make it more realistic.

4. Uncover the dough and use a large, sharp knife to cut off the end:

Success! Looks kind of bacon-y to me. Cut the rest of the slices. Take the aforementioned wooden dowels and place them on your cookie sheet. They will probably roll around, but the cookies will anchor them in place. Cover the dowels with parchment paper. Lay the slices on the cookie sheet, on top of the dowels:

I think this picture helps much more than my rambling instructions! If your cookies break a little at the grooves, just pinch the dough a bit to smooth it out. Mine still cracked a bit, but I think they still look great.

5. Bake your cookies according to your recipe’s instructions. The thickness of the slices will affect the baking time. I just baked mine in 3-4 minute intervals until I was happy with them. I think it ended up being about double the original baking time, but mine were pretty thick. Err on the side of overcooking them a little to ensure they are firm enough to keep their shape. The finished product should look a little like this:

A little dark on the edges, but seriously – it’s bacon! Allow the cookies to cool completely in the pan before removing them.

6. To add some peppered pizazz, I had to make some “pepper” sugar. I sprinkled some pepper into a bowl for reference. I decided that some black colored sugar mixed with some brown sugar (not brown colored sugar, just regular brown sugar) should do the trick:

Close enough!

Then, I used a trick from Bake at 350 for attaching sugar to cookies (besides dumping sugar onto still-wet icing, my usual method). I mixed a little bit of meringue powder with a little bit of water, painted the edges of the cookies with the mixture, then sprinkled or dunked the cookies into the sugar, depending on the angle:

The more irregular, the better – it’s bacon!

Now, go enjoy your bacon cookies.

Only a glass of orange juice and a couple eggs away from a balanced cookie breakfast!

  Find more bacon desserts here. 

 

Tagged as: bacon, brown, cookies, red