For those of us who are BACON OBSESSED, this recipe is a dream come true: Sweet and savory in a cookie. You can thank my friend Sara DeFusco for inventing this. She’s a fellow bacon-a-holic but neither of us are in denial about our addiction.

Sara is the wife of my friend Boston Chris. Ironically, I met Chris in Portland, and he now lives in the South so at some point we have to drop the Boston from his name. Anyway, when Sara was first introduced to our group of friends, we liked her instantly when she got Chris out on the dance floor. None of us had ever seen him dance. We knew she was “the” girl for him from the minute the music started.

So what follows is Sara answering my questions and then she spills the BACON SUGAR COOKIE recipe she created.

Aine: First how did you learn to cook?
Sara: I ain’t gonna lie. My mom was not the best cook. She made a great roast chicken and a helluva beef stew, but we Irish are not known for our cuisine.

I pretty much taught myself, by reading, watching and talking with others. Remember, Julia Child said “if you can read, you can cook.” So I did.

Aine: So how did you get into baking?

Sara: I never had an interest in baking until an internet search served up many sweets recipes featuring bacon.   Last Christmas, I made chocolate chip cookies for all the neighbors, and they all seemed to like them.   I’ve also used sweets as a substitute for smoking.   I became quite fond of the sea salt/ chocolate bars that are so popular right now.  I even went so far as to pay EIGHT DOLLARS for a chocolate bar with bacon in it, at Whole Foods.  It was not as great as you’d think.

Thus, I decided I could make a sweet salty treat, on my own, at home, cheaply.

Aine: Did you just start with this recipe or how did your “process” work?

Sara:I tried a brownie recipe I found online.  Disaster. The recipe had me putting  whole raw bacon in between layers of brownie mix, like a lasagna.  Needless to say, the bacon was not crispy, and the whole thing just fell apart.

Next, I put some pre-cooked bacon bits on top of brownies, when they were mostly done baking, but the bacon kinda fell off as you tried to eat the brownie.

So following the philosophy of “keep it simple, stupid” , I realized–sugar cookies were the way to go.  Simple sweetness to complement the salty bacon.  Got a package of dry Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix (even though it was Thanksgiving time and I was almost tempted by gingerbread…), fried up some bacon till crispy, chopped it up, and stirred it into the batter as if they were chocolate chips.

The finishing touch is lightly salting the cookie balls with table salt before they go in the oven.  just to kick it up a notch.

Eat ’em, and holler AMEN!

Bacon Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

– 1 pkg Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix (or if you have your own recipe use that)

– 6-8 slices of bacon, cooked and broken into small chips

– salt

Directions:

1. Mix up the cookie dough according to package directions

2. Throw in the crispy bacon bits

3. Roll dough into balls

4. Lightly salt the balls of cookie dough

5. Cook at 375 degrees for 7-9 minutes.