Smoked Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies
5 dozen cookies
4 strips thick-cut hickory-smoked bacon, cooked and chilled
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp chili powder
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 Tbsp chilled bacon fat
1 tsp vanilla paste
2 large eggs, room temperature
16 ounces dark chocolate morsels
1 cup turbinado sugar
1) Cook the bacon as you prefer. (I cook mine on wire racks in a baking sheet at 400 degrees until crisp.) Cool and cut into small dice. Chill the diced bacon while you make the dough.
2) Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
3) Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
4) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, fine sea salt, cinnamon and chili powder. Set aside.
5) In a standing mixer, cream together the two sugars, butter and bacon fat. Add the vanilla paste and beat to combine. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until fully combined.
6) Turn off the mixer and add in all the dry mixture. Pulse the mixture a few times (so the dry doesn’t all fly in your face), and then mix just until no streaks of flour remain.
7) Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the dark chocolate morsels and the chilled bacon pieces.
8) Portion the dough with a 1 Tbsp cookie scoop and roll each dough ball in turbinado sugar. Place twelve cookies on each baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, one sheet at a time, and rotate the sheet after 6 minutes. The cookies should be brown at the edges and still golden and puffed in the middle. They will finish their cooking outside the oven on the hot baking sheet.
9) Cool the cookies on the sheet for 5 minutes and then remove the cookies to cool on a wire rack.
