Maple Bacon Cookie Sandwiches

The Art.

    Whenever I eat a hearty American breakfast, I love to slather my waffles in maple syrup. My plate inevitably becomes a primordial tar pit of tree sap, but I'm ok with that.  I consider it an homage to comfort food and cold weather traditions. I especially make sure to get a little bit of maple syrup on my bacon before I eat it, because all of the flavors and textures complement each other so well--crispy, sticky, sweet, salty. I've wanted to put these flavors in a dessert for a long time, in keeping with my tendency to put bacon in things where it doesn't belong. This time, I combined bacon crumbles and maple syrup into a rich, sweet-and-salty icing, then I sandwiched it between two crisp, buttery sugar cookies. To decorate, I piped some beautiful royal icing leaves on top (I promise they're not as difficult as they look). I recommend enjoying these rich cookies with a hot cup of black tea or coffee.

The Science.

    As if I needed another reason to love it, many studies have found that compounds within maple syrup have beneficial antioxidant properties. A recent study even shows that maple syrup's phenolic compounds can restore normal cell growth in some cancers [1]. However it is with a heavy heart that I tell you that some manufacturers "adulterate" their syrups with beet or cane sugars. These sugars are cheap and readily available, but they are less healthy sugars for the body. Fortunately, a research group in Quebec has developed a very sensitive mass spectrometry method to detect sugar contamination, by measuring the amount of malic acid in the sample and comparing it to the overall sugar content [2]. If certain sugars are more abundant, then the syrup has been sweetened. This detection method can now be used to assure quality control of the maple syrup that we purchase...and slather our bacon in.

The Recipe.

Cookies: Make one batch of square sugar cookies, and one batch of royal icing (recipes here).

Maple Bacon Icing:

2 strips raw bacon

1/2 cup butter, softened

3 cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons Grade A maple syrup

     Pan fry the bacon until crisp, but not burned. Place it on paper towels until cool, then crumble into small pieces. Pour the bacon fat from the pan through a coffee filter into a small bowl, and chill until solid. In a medium bowl, beat together bacon fat and butter until fluffy. Gradually add powdered sugar while beating until incorporated. Beat in maple syrup and crumbled bacon.

Assembly:

     Once cookies have cooled completely, make cookie sandwiches by spreading the bottom side of a cookie with the maple bacon icing and smooshing it onto another cookie. (Yes, smooshing is a professional baking term.) To make leaf decorations, fill a piping bag with royal icing and add a #3 round tip. Trace the outline of a leaf onto the cookie sandwich. Before the icing dries, lightly pull the icing toward the center of the leaf with a small brush as shown in the photo. Finish the leaf by piping the veins and stem.

    Allow cookies to dry for at least one hour. To show you're a classy hostess, serve cookies on doilies with a cup of hot tea. Cookies can be stored at room temperature in an airtight container for 3 days, or in the freezer for up to 2 months.

1. Gonzalez-Sarrias et al. "Maple polyphenols, ginnalins A-C, induce S- and G2/M-cell cycle arrest in colon and breast cancer cells mediated by decreasing cyclins A and D1 levels." Food Chem., 2013. Vol. 136(2): pp 636-642.

2. Tremblay, P and Paquin, R. "Improved Detection of Sugar Addition to Maple Syrup Using Malic Acid as Internal Standard and in 13C Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS)" J. Agric. Food Chem., 2007. Vol. 55(2): pp 197-203.