Candied Bacon & Macadamia Bark

Last week I received a lovely package from Aero with some of their newly revamped chocolates and my trickiest blogging task yet. They asked me to create an obscure flavour concoction to celebrate their new makeover.

Armed with a flavour thesaurus, I set to work, mixing and matching ingredients in my head and trying to find something that would work but was still a bit “out there”. Matt’s love of bacon won and we settled on an idea for a nutty, smokey take on my peppermint bark recipe. Candied bacon and macadamia bark.

The nutty, smokey and sweet toppings are levelled by the bitterness of the dark chocolate, a concoction that works perfectly, even if you don’t expect it.

The recipe includes enough candied bacon just to make the bark, but I suggest you make extra and keep some aside to top homemade pancakes – it’s ok, you can thank me later.

You’ll need:

300g dark chocolate (I used 70%, broken in to chunks)

8 Smoked bacon rashers 

Handful of macadamia nuts

1 tbsp light soft brown sugar

 

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees. Line a baking sheet with grease proof paper or a non stick sheet (you know how much I love mine, this is why). Rub the sugar in to the rashers and lay out.

Bake for around 30minutes or until your bacon looks like this hunk of meaty goodness:

Leave that lovely candied bacon to cool and head to the chocolate. Set up a double boiler to melt your chocolate (a bowl set over a pan of hot water) and stir continuously until you have smooth, silky, chocolate with a glass like sheen.

Pour in to a small non stick roasting tin (I like to use my stoneware dishes for this). It’s important now to leave the chocolate to cool a little before we add the nuts and bacon, otherwise they’ll just sink to the bottom. Give it 5 minutes, make yourself a cup of tea or something.

When you come back to it, roughly chop your bacon and nuts and sprinkle them on to the chocolate. Now the hard bit, leave until it has set! If you try to break it up before then it’s not going to look pretty.

Bash with something heavy for unwieldy shards or take to it with a super sharp knife if you’d like perfect squares. Devour.