Everything's better with bacon

Almost any food can be improved by the addition of bacon. For some foods, this is obvious; salads, burgers and chicken are clearly better with bacon. Some foods don't take much imagination to see that this might be true - for example, a good steak is perfectly good alone, but a nice slice of crispy, streaky bacon would add a lovely counterpoint to it. But the argument that all food is improved by bacon is generally derailed by desserts; certainly, I don't want any bacon with my Black Forest Gateau thank-you-very-much.

But I don't see why this should be true of cookies. Well, let's see, shall we?

Bacon and Walnut Cookies

Ingredients

• 3 Rashers unsmoked bacon (25g cooked weight)
• 40g Butter
• 80g Caster sugar
• 1 Egg
• 1tbsp Honey
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 75g Self-raising flour
• 40g Walnuts

Method

1. Rinse the bacon to remove excess salt.
2. Trim off all the fat from the bacon and finely chop.
3. Fry the bacon until crispy. Set aside to drain.
4. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.
5. Beat in the egg, honey and vanilla extract.
6. Finely chop the walnuts.
7. Sift the flour into the mixture and fold in with the bacon and walnuts.
8. Spoon onto greased baking trays and bake at ~190C/Gas Mark 5 for 10-12 minutes until golden.
9. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Here is the bacon after frying (end of step 3). It looks surprisingly like the artificial bacon bits you can buy.

Ready for the oven (step 8).

Fresh from the oven - I slightly overcooked them, but I think I've gotten away with it.

I had (what I thought was) a genius idea just before I baked this, but I couldn't be bothered effect it - that of caramelising the bacon bits after frying. If this turns out well, maybe I'll give that a go next time around...