Candied Bacon!

I was reading an article about New Year's Eve party hosting, and it suggested putting out candied bacon. Candied bacon?! How had I never thought of this? I love bacon. I love candy. Why hadn't this amazing idea come to me?

Now, sometimes you put together two awesome things and get something awful. Example: riding a scooter = awesome, playing in the rain = awesome, scooting in the rain? Distinctly not awesome. But I was willing to give this candied bacon thing a try.

The recipe the article offered looked like this:

8 strips of bacon
4 tbsp light brown sugar
Pinch of cayenne

I decided to try a few different varieties. I made one strip of bacon following their recipe. Then I did a strip using granulated sugar instead of brown sugar. And a third strip of bacon where I substitute maple syrup for the brown sugar.

The maple syrup was definitely the easiest of the three to prepare for the oven. Granulated sugar came in second, and the brown sugar came in a distant (and kind of annoying) third. I could dredge both sides of the bacon with the syrup and the sugar. Not so much for the brown sugar. With the brown sugar I had to sprinkle the sugar mixture onto the bacon once it was in the pan.

Speaking of the pan, I crumpled some aluminum foil to line the baking sheet, so that the bacon didn't sit in its own fat while baking. Popped into the oven for 15 minutes at 325, and then cranked up the heat to 375 for 5 minutes.

How did the flavors compare? Brown sugar was the clear and easy winner. It had the best "candied" effect, giving the bacon a little extra crunch. It also had much more depth of flavor when compared with the granulated sugar. The maple syrup had good flavor, but I really liked the extra crunch from the brown sugar. Another perk of the brown sugar was that it gave the strip of bacon a more rich color than the granulated sugar.

So, brown sugar is a bit more difficult to work with, but that's definitely the way I'll go when I make this dish to bring to a party!