These Are Not My Grandma’s Chocolate Chip Cookies!
by Eric N Gibson
Contributing Writer
My grandparents, so I hear tell, were good cooks. Both of my grandmothers and my granddad could make something from nearly nothing. In fact, as soon as Gramps was old enough to, in the words of Louis L’Amour, “light a shuck,” he was down the trail from Grafton County and never looked back. He was a chef, learning his trade the old way, cooking in some of the best hotels up and down the Eastern Seaboard. This was back in the day when family vacations, by names like Rockefeller and Carnegie, were taken for months at a time. But I can honestly say that these cookies I write to you about, are not my granddad’s (or grandma’s) chocolate chip cookies.
I had been dreaming of these cookies for a long time. A chewy soft chocolate chip cookie with sweet brown sugar paired with cracked sea salt on top and laced with bits of crisp smokey maple bacon…
“ WHAT!?!? NOW HOLD ON JUST A MINUTE!!!” you say.
But yes, you read it right… BACON!
It started as a whim, a text to my best friend. Someone I’ve known since high school and when it comes to food, we think a lot alike. The text conversation went something like this:
ME: So, what do you think about Maple Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies?
FRIEND: Ya! Duh!
Not much of a conversation but I did get the affirmation that I was looking for.
So, thinking I had stumbled onto a genius idea I searched the internet for a recipe, feeling quite sure of myself, nearly prideful in fact, that I was a maverick, a trail blazer, a a… a solo artist! WRONG! It appears the internet is rife with these types of recipes and I was but a mere greenhorn, an interloper, a Johnny come lately. But, before some of you readers out there, literarians of such works as Cosmo and Vanity Fair consider this recipe passe’, take a moment to ponder the flavors one will indulge in when one partakes in such a treat. The pairing of chocolate and salt, smoke and bacon, butter and brown sugar. All are delicious combinations that complement one another to make each flavor pop.
In the interest of full disclosure I’ll be honest with you. The next time I make these cookies (Oh yes! They are good enough to make again!) I will purchase a good lean premium bacon. One that I know has a consistent rich, smokey, maple flavor. The bacon I selected, while passable for many applications, was not full flavored. It was actually rather tame. It was from a pig we purchased this year, and while I have no complaints about the people we purchased it from nor the cuts themselves, my issue is with the butcher / smoker of choice. The bacon lacked that robust flavor you expect with smoked meats, and much of that flavor is the results from the expertise of the people that smoke the meats. So use a bacon that you know is going to be lean and flavorful and get ready to enjoy a cookie that is uniquely different.
So were these cookies ¨Love at First Bite”? I prefer to think of it as a long courtship worth pursuing. A mix of first impressions; soft grains of brown sugar brush against your upper lip as you bite into that chewy cookie. Taste buds strike upon that undeniably pleasing flavor of sweetened carmelized brown butter on the end of your tongue as it gently forces that malleable cookie to the roof of your mouth. That unmistakable taste of ever so lightly bitter chocolate, a quick follow up. Then you lick your lips, thinking there is a bit of sugar attempting to escape and you catch a piece of salt tucked away, dislodged from a hidden recess. Your brain finds it all a complement in contrast; salt, sugar, browned butter, chocolate. And finally, just as your pallet recovers from this first assault and thinks you are ready for your next bite, you taste that telltale bacon flavor; not too much maple, not too much smoke, not too much salt, just enough to ruminate on while taste buds again are tickled. So I’d say these cookies are more like any good romance that stands the test of time; the chemistry is most certainly there.
From first impressions to final finish; if you like chocolate chip cookies and you like sugar and you like salt and you like bacon but you never thought you would like them together, then these cookies are worth a try. Not for gobbling, they are to be slowly savored. Indulged upon with your favorite coffee or tea, they are the perfect companion on a cool Fall afternoon, curled up in a blanket on the sofa with a good read. Or enjoyed, perhaps, while just musing over The Simple Feast.
Enjoy!
