SAVORY & SWEET

A beloved breakfast meat is showing up after dinner instead.

MCClatchy Newspapers

The latest sizzling-hot foodie fad has dessert-lovers feeling positively porkasmic.

Bacon has become the salty yin to the sweet yang of cupcakes, ice creams, bread puddings and chocolate pastries — and it’s showing up everywhere from haute cuisine menus to state fair fare around the world.

Time magazine devoted ink to the trend this year, and an episode of the Food Network show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” still in rotation features foodies’ favorite bacon desserts.

Home cooks are whipping up bacon-sweets, too, if food magazines and a recent crop of cookbooks — featuring recipes like maple-bacon milkshakes and sweet-potato bacon fritters — are any indication.

“Bacon dessert is not surprising from a flavor standpoint,” said Maile Carpenter, editor in chief of Food Network Magazine. It’s that sweet-salty taste-bud tango we love — think honey-roasted nuts, chocolate-covered pretzels and sea-salted caramels.

Plus, “we’re used to maple syrup falling on bacon at breakfast,” Carpenter said.

The magazine’s June/July issue features a recipe for maple French toast and bacon cupcakes — the winner in a monthly reader recipe contest — and the cupcakes’ creator, Kara Scow of McKinney, said they were, in fact, breakfast-inspired.

“When I was a kid, I’d go to IHOP and get French toast with maple syrup and bacon and eat it all together,” Scow told the magazine.

And in these complicated, turbulent, is-the-stock-market-up-or-down days, a dose of delightful gastronomic nostalgia may be a big reason we’re baking with bacon.

“I think it’s kind of getting back to our roots, like growing up all over again,” said Greg Smith, Central Market’s business-development manager for meat. “Getting up in the morning, going downstairs to the smell of bacon in the frying pan — it doesn’t get any better than that.”

For the past few years, the pork product has permeated American culture, with blogs, clubs and food “stuff” (baconnaise or bacon salt, anyone?) devoted to all things bacon. T-shirts proclaim, “Everything tastes better with bacon” and “I liked bacon before it was cool.”

Central Market satisfied local bacon lovers when it rolled out a 15-item bacon menu in Fort Worth and Dallas stores last month.

The menu includes bacon from Wisconsin to West Virginia and from Iowa to Texas; there’s cherry-wood smoked, 10-clove garlic, jalapeno, cob-smoked — even a slightly sweet apple-cinnamon bacon.

Central Market also sells a much-ballyhooed Vosges Mo’s Bacon Bar, a $7 chocolate-bacon candy bar that some say might have started the whole bacon-dessert trend a couple of years ago.

Chefs’ favorite

Another reason bacon is so hot these days? Chefs love it, Carpenter said.

“I would guess if you asked 100 chefs about their top five foods, bacon would be among them,” Carpenter said.

“They practically tattoo themselves with bacon.”

In meat-loving North Texas, chefs have had mixed results with bacon-laden desserts.

Craft Dallas offered a dessert of pancakes and maple ice cream with candied bacon pieces last fall.

And about a year ago, chef David Uygur of Lola in Dallas created a maple-bacon ice cream served over a Belgian-style waffle with apples, which he included on the fixed-price menu.

“Honestly the people who tried it loved it; some days we would get a run on it,” he said.

“And others would say it was too weird.”

Mike McMahan — a self-proclaimed dessert lover and owner of the Mac’s restaurants in Fort Worth, Colleyville and Arlington — is penciling in a slight amendment to his grandmother’s cherished old-fashioned fudge recipe: he’s replacing the pecans with bacon.

“I thought the saltiness and fudginess would be good,” said McMahan, who tried chocolate-coated bacon in Chicago last year and thought it was tasty.

While the bacon-fudge recipe is still being fine-tuned for customers (employees have tried it and loved it, he said), McMahan is also thinking of adding a “beignet type thing” with maple and bacon to his menus.

The secret to adding bacon as a “pop” of savory to a sweet dessert, he said, is all in how the bacon crumbles.

“The key is making sure the bacon is crispy,” McMahan said. “And add it at the very end so it doesn’t taste weird.”

The authors of the new “Canal House Cooking” say they first tasted this hors d’oeuvre years ago at a cocktail party in New York City catered by Swifty’s, the swanky Upper East Side joint.

CANDIED BACON

Makes about 12 pieces

1 8- to 12-ounce package sliced bacon

11‚Ñ2 cups light brown sugar

Vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Separate the bacon strips and blot them dry with paper towels. Spread the brown sugar out in a wide flat dish. Coat both sides of the bacon with the sugar, firmly pressing the sugar onto each strip.

Lay the bacon strips out on a large foil-lined baking sheet (some of the sugar will fall off, but that’s OK). Cook the bacon in the oven, turning once, until it is browned and lacquered, 15-20 minutes.

Transfer the bacon strips to a lightly oiled baking sheet to cool. Break in half or into thirds to serve.

From “Canal House Cooking, Vol. 1” (Canal House, $19.95)

This next recipe was created by Central Market and incorporates bacon from the new bacon menu in the Fort Worth and Dallas stores’ meat departments.

BACON PECAN CARAMEL ICE CREAM BALLS

Serves 4

1‚Ñ2pound of Nodine’s Smokehouse Honey Bacon

1pint Central Market Organics Vanilla ice cream (or chocolate, see tip below)

1cup toasted pecans, chopped fine

11‚Ñ2cups caramel or chocolate sauce (try Gifford’s)

1. Heat an iron skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the bacon strips until crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon to paper towel-lined platter and allow to cool. Crumble the bacon.

2. Blend the bacon crumbles and the pecans on a flat surface such as a plate.

3. While firm, scoop the ice cream into packed ice cream balls. Roll the ice cream balls in the pecan and bacon mixture until well coated. Pop them into a glass dish and drizzle generously with caramel sauce.

Tip: This is also excellent with chocolate ice cream, too. For a surprise kick, spicy food lovers will enjoy this recipe with jalapeno bacon mixed in, too.

Central Market

MAPLE BACON SHAKE

Makes about 31‚Ñ2 cups

2 slices bacon (about 2 ounces), cut into thin strips

6 tablespoons cold whole or low-fat milk (about 3 ounces)

2 tablespoons pure maple syrup, preferably grade B (about 1 ounce)

Pinch of salt

8 medium scoops French vanilla ice cream (about 1 quart), softened until just melty at the edges.

1. Fry the bacon in a small skillet set over medium heat, stirring frequently, until rendered and crisp, about 5 minutes. With a slotted spoon, remove the cooked bacon to paper towels to drain, and nibble on it or reserve it for another use. Off the heat, briefly cool the fat in the skillet.

2. Place the milk, maple syrup, 1 tablespoon of cooled bacon fat (if there is any more, you can discard it), salt and ice cream in a blender and pulse several times to begin breaking up the ice cream.

3. With the blender motor off, use a flexible spatula to mash the mixture down onto the blender blades. Continue pulsing, stopping and mashing until the mixture is well blended, thick and moves easily in the blender jar, roughly 30 to 90 seconds. Pour into a chilled glass or glasses, and serve at once.

From “Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes” by Adam Ried (W.W. Norton, $24.95)

This breakfast-inspired cupcake recipe, created by Kara Scow of McKinney, was the winner of the “Food Network Magazine” June/July reader recipe contest, in which maple syrup had to be used.

MAPLE FRENCH TOAST AND BACON CUPCAKES

Makes 12 cupcakes

For the cupcakes:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup cake flour

1 3.9-ounce box instant vanilla pudding mix

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon potato starch

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1‚Ñ2 teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

3‚Ñ4 cup packed light brown sugar

3‚Ñ4 cup granulated sugar

11‚Ñ2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 large egg whites, at room temperature

1‚Ñ4 cup maple syrup

1‚Ñ2 cup half-and-half, at room temperature

1‚Ñ2 cup chopped cooked bacon (5 strips)

For the frosting:

18-ounce package cream cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1‚Ñ4 cup maple syrup

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 strips bacon, cooked and chopped (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Place paper liners in a 12-cup muffin tin. Prepare the cupcakes: Combine the flours, pudding mix, baking powder, potato starch, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a bowl with a whisk.

2. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugars with a mixer on low speed until combined, 6 to 8 minutes. Gradually mix in the vanilla and egg whites. Scrape down the sides of the bowl; continue mixing until light and fluffy. Add the flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with the maple syrup and half-and-half, mixing after each addition and ending with flour. Mix until the ingredients are just combined; do not overmix. Fold in the bacon.

3. Pour the batter into the prepared muffin tin, filling each cup about three-quarters of the way. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Cool completely.

4. Meanwhile, prepare the frosting: Beat the cream cheese and butter with a mixer on medium speed until creamy. Add the confectioners’ sugar, maple syrup and cinnamon; beat until combined. Spread on the cooled cupcakes; top with chopped bacon, if desired.

”Food Network Magazine”