Cracklin Krackle

My friend Colby can sniff out a pork product like a pig sniffin out a truffle. You may recall Colby directed me to the "how to make Cracklin" link in a post a while back. He also discovered the Wake-n-Bacon alarm clock. Well Colby's been back at it again. Yesterday at work I had a "milk out the nose" moment. Except I was drinking Coke. Colby forwarded me this link:Bacon Exotic Candy BarOf course my initial reaction was "Nasty!" but that reaction soon faded. I began to think perhaps there was something to this. I mean what was the old saying for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups? Two great things that go great together? Well salty sweet peanut butter and smooth sweet chocolate. Swap out peanuts for bacon and it should still work, right? I decided I simply had to have some. But as you can see from the link above, they're "Sold Out." CURSES!!! How dare you tease me this way Colby! But then. A stroke of brilliance. How hard could it be to make your own chocolate covered bacon? And at $7 for a tiny 3oz box, I knew I could do better. So on my way home I stopped off at the store to buy the finest chocolate and bacon money could buy. Since Harris Teeter was the store, I had to scale down my spending a bit.For future reference, do NOT buy this brand of bacon. I fell into the trap of "it's 30% more expensive so it MUST taste better." It tastes fine, however it took WAY longer to cook in the microwave than the instructions said. I mean, COME ON!! When I want bacon don't tell me 30 seconds when it gonna take 2 1/2 minutes! 150 seconds is a LIFETIME in Baconland! (The reason it took so long was due to the bacon being.. well.. let's just say Jack Sprat's wife would LOVE it!) As for the chocolate, I had my heart set on Lindt chocolate, perhaps the finest pure milk chocolate you can get without going broke. We do have a Lindt store in the meager mall down the road but it was in the wrong direction, and I had a bacon craving.Normally I just microwave my chocolate to melt it, but today was special. It was double boiler time! I don't double boil for just any old reason. This was semi expensive chocolate. Besides my microwave was being "hogged" by the bacon that won't cook. (yes I said "Hogged"). If you noticed there seems to be less than a full bar of chocolate in the double boiler, that is because I ate some of if. A good cook will test their ingredients first. Wouldn't want bad chocolate to ruin my expensive, yet slow cooking bacon. Finally the bacon finished cooking and cooling. I broke the strips in half and in they go! Well after I ate 3 of them.The thick sliced bacon was good so it wouldn't break easily as it flipped in the chocolate. I found that it was easier to use the spatula to "paint" the bacon so the chocolate would get into all the nooks and crannies.Place them on a cooling rack and into the freezer for 15 minutes. For future reference they should go on waxed paper on top of the cooling rack. Trying to pry frozen chocolate covered bacon off a cold metal rack results in broken chocolate covered bacon. Tune in tomorrow to see what I did with the remaining chocolate and the agonizing 15 minute wait for the bacon to chill out. So how was it, you ask? It was salty, sweet, crispy, and crunchy. Honestly, it tasted EXACTLY how I thought chocolate covered bacon would taste. I probably need to work with the chocolate some though as it melts WAY too quickly when you are eating the bacon. I suspect a sprinling of kosher salt or candy "sprinkles" (or both?) immediately after they come out of the chocolate could go a long way for look, texture and taste. I wonder what the expressions would be on their faces at work if I brought chocolate covered bacon aka "Muddy Pigs" instead of the promised chocolate turtle cheesecake for Boss' day next month. On second though I just got this job, so that's probably not a good idea for now. As for the title of this post, of course you now understand. "Cracklin" is the term for deep fried pig skins. And Hershey has their Krackle candy bar. Not to be confused with Nestle's Crunch bar. And now there's the Crunch Crisp candy bar which seems a bit redundant and a lot retarded. Now if they'd add some bacon to it, then they'd really have something! They could just call it "Crack." Cause everyone would try it once and instantly be hooked! OK, so maybe I'm not good at the whole marketing thing. But darn it have you SEEN the names of all those energy drinks they're making these days?