Brown Butter, Bacon, & Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oh boy, this is a new favorite! You can't go wrong with bacon. The salty sweet combination of chocolate and hickory-smoked bacon is absolutely divine. This recipe is so easy, too!

Ingredients
 set oven to 350
 
1 3/4 c. Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
12 Tb. Unsalted Butter
1/2 c. Sugar
3/4 c. packed Dark Brown Sugar
1 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. Pure Vanilla Extract (I use Organic Madagascar Bourbon)
1 Large Egg
1 Large Egg Yolk
4 oz. Dark Chocolate, diced or slivered into 1/4" pieces (or whatever you'd like)
1 c. Bacon (fried until crispy, diced into 1/4" pieces)
keep the bacon grease!

Make it!

1) After setting your oven to 350, whisk together your flour and baking soda.

2) Fry up at least 8 pieces of bacon... local hickory smoked is the bomb, if you can find that! Let those get real nice and crispy before transferring them to a paper towel-covered plate to cool. It's great to make extra so that you must eat a few of those delicious strips of pig. Don't throw out the bacon grease. Chop the bacon into small 1/4" pieces.

3) Now, using a skillet over medium flame, toss in 10 tbsp. of unsalted butter, stirring continuously and watching it like a hawk. You don't want your brown butter to become burnt butter. Once it's all melted and golden, transfer that to a heat-safe bowl. Now add in about 1 extra tbsp of butter, and pour in the extra bacon grease that you created. Oh boy!

4) In your mixing bowl, pour your brown butter in, along with your sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Mix! This concoction on its own is to die for. Try dipping a piece of bacon in. Mmmmmm...

5) Add egg and egg yolk. Mix until its all very smooth. Let it sit for about 30 seconds, and mix again just to be sure that sugar is really well mixed/dissolved.

6) Chop your chocolate off the block, or from a chocolate bar or use a bag of chocolate morsels. Whatever strikes your fancy. I personally loved chopping slivers off of a quality block of dark chocolate.

7) With a wooden spoon, stir in the chocolate and bacon pieces until its all very combined.

8) Transfer dough balls to a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet, and bake for about 13 minutes. Keep watch! They should be slightly golden on the edges, but gooey on the inside when they're ready to come out of the oven.

Enjoy!!