Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Banana Bac-O-Bake
After Courtney's offer to put bacon on my PB&B I made a mental note: Step 1 is to remove the banana sticker and place it on the end of your nose until you are done cooking. Remove about 10 slices of the bacon from the package. Cut the slices in half. In my recipe I used an old trick I have known for many years: bacon stretching.   Next we need to cut our bananas. First peel the banana, then you cut them with three "steak cuts" producing four banana cylinders. It is best to cut one banana and finish the recipe for that one before cutting another banana to prevent browning. With one slice of bacon cylinder and one slice of banana, carefully wrap the bacon around the banana, securing it with a tooth pick. Place the wrapped banana on a baking sheet. Continue cutting and wrapping all of the bananas with bacon.   The difficulty in this recipe has to do with the bacon wrapping. You don't want too much bacon around the banana or the heat won't cook the bacon all the way through. While rolling the bacon out does thin the bacon, it also results in many more layers of bacon on each banana. I think if you can cut the bacon so it results in only one layer of bacon that would work best. This will require a bit more investigation into the cutting and rolling out of the bacon. The moist banana keeps the bacon from getting really crispy, so if you are a crunchy bacon fan, this may not be your thing. And if you don't eat them soon after they come out of the oven they get brown (not the good kind of brown) and mushy, and then the bananas start to lose moisture and the bacon gets yucky. So eat it while it's hot! Probably the most important thing I learned from this is: just because you HAVE five bananas and a whole package of bacon doesn't mean you have to USE all five bananas. Once I ripped into the package of Bacon I couldn't help myself. I was rolling and cutting bacon and having a grand of time. It was only when I had 20 bacon wrapped banana slices on the tray that I realized the problem: that's a lot of bananas! In the future, perhaps maybe one banana will do. If you are wondering what happened to the leftover bacon I have one simple question: Unless you keep that bacon in your pocket until lunch, the roaming bacon grazers will get to your stash of bacon and it won't make it to your sandwich. That happens all the time around my family. If you placed a plate of home made cookies and home made bacon side by side on the counter, the bacon will disappear before the cookies. After all Bacon is Meat Candy.  |
