Peanut Butter, Chocolate & Bacon

While staying at Mom's, we tried this recipe that sounded like it had the fixins of something wonderful...

We found it on the Betty Crocker website.

Chocolate-Topped Peanut Butter-Bacon Bars

1 pouch Betty Crocker® peanut butter cookie mix
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons maple-flavored syrup
1 egg
10 slices bacon, crisply cooked, crumbled
1/2 cup chopped peanuts
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (6 oz)

• 1 Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly spray 9- or 8-inch square pan with cooking spray.
• 2 In large bowl, stir together cookie mix, oil, syrup and egg until soft dough forms. Reserve 1/4 cup bacon for garnish. Stir remaining bacon and peanuts into dough. Press evenly in pan.
• 3 Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven; sprinkle with chocolate chips. Return to oven; bake 1 minute. Immediately spread chocolate over bars. Sprinkle reserved 1/4 cup bacon over chocolate. Cool completely, about 1 hour or until chocolate is set.
• 4 For bars, cut into 4 rows by 4 rows. Store tightly covered in refrigerator. 

I'm sorry to say that this one gets a bad review.  Perhaps it was the high Ohio humidity, but the cookie was extremely soft - to the point it tasted stale.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much bacon taste, even though I actually used more than the recipe required.  This one had so much potential!

The Real Scoop
By Andrew
I jumped up and down when I saw all three of my favorite foods in one recipe, but YUCK. 

I'm done with recipes for a while.  I need to go do something more manly.

This one had me worried...

...because it had no REAL sugar and it coupled lemon with Heath.  Hmmm....

Butter Ball Chiffons

1 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1-3.4 oz. pkg. instant lemon pudding
2 tsp. water
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
2 chopped Heath bars

In a small bowl, cream butter and powdered sugar till light and fluffy.  (Issue #1 - it never got light &, but I kept going.)

Beat in the pudding, water and vanilla.  Gradually add flour.  Stir in nuts and candy bars.

Roll into balls.  Place 2" apart on ungreased cooky sheet.  Bake at 325 degrees for 12-15 minutes or till lightly browned.

Cool for 3 minutes before removing from pan.  (Issue #2 - they didn't get done on the inside.  I made the balls smaller and that seemed to work, but they weren't very big to begin with.  Tiny cookies....pfft!)

The Real Scoop
by Andrew
These were not sweet enough.  (Not that I need to be any sweeter!)
P.S. Lando didn't get any cookies, he just likes his picture taken.

Southern Shortbread Cookies

1/2 cup of softened butter
5 tablespoons of sugar
1 cup of flour
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
whole almonds


Cream butter and sugar.  Add flour, salt and vanilla.

Roll into small balls, then flatten by pressing an almond into the top.

Bake 20 minutes or till golden.

The recipe only made as many cookies as shown (plus the three for neighborhood children I used as taste-testers).  That's 14 cookies total.  BOO!  The recipe said it made 30 cookies, and as you can see, I made them small...not much bigger than the almond on top.

Also, since this dough had no liquid but the vanilla, they were very difficult to roll into balls.  In fact, I had to squeeze the dough into balls.

They were tasty, but I probably won't make these again.

This recipe was borrowed from Eat Dessert First! by Sue Ellen Cooper.