Chocolate & Bacon

Ok, so that's a photo of chopped toffee…but it looked more appetizing than a photo of bacon!  (All part of the same recipe though.)

Meg invited me to her gourmet club dinner this weekend.  The theme is "ultimate tailgate food".  So I'm left with a couple dilemmas ~ I'm not a gourmet cook, and have never tailgated!  {Nor do I know any sports teams, so I can't even wing it really…}  But I can bake.  Go with what ya know, right?  So, aiming to bring an "ultimate cupcake" I dashed right over to CupcakeBlog for a little inspiration.  A Chocolate Bacon cupcake w/Maple Cream Cheese frosting seemed to fit the bill.

I started by cooking up a few pieces of bacon (weird!) and chopping the chocolate covered toffee ~ both of which end up in the batter.
The dry ingredients get whisked together separately at first.  The cocoa powder really smelled yummy during this step!
Then you alternate adding the chocolate/flour mix with the milk/vanilla mix into the whipped butter & sugar.
Yummers!  Yep, I tested a bit of the batter.  🙂
Pretty cute.  I love this tiny size.  Surprisingly, the bacon didn't seem out of place in there.  The overall flavor leans toward a salty+sweet combo, but is mostly just sweet.  I'm waiting until just before the party to frost them, but I'll be sure to snap a photo once they're all topped off & before they get devoured.  Wish me luck!

♥